Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

improving national economy—alliance with nature’s governmentmies of the U.S. and Canada. This research analyzed the effect of thegroup practice of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programson a commonly used measure of national economic performance,Okun’s “misery index” of inflation and unemployment.Part 2:The Maharishi Effect and the National Economy:Research on the U.S. and CanadaAmong the predicted results of the Maharishi Effect on the qualityof national life are improved economic performance, increased wealthand prosperity, and decreased economic problems, including unemployment(Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 1978, p. 66; 1985, pp. 171–172).In the research described in this section, statistical time series analysiswas used to test the hypothesis that the group practice of the TranscendentalMeditation and TM-Sidhi programs by a single, large groupin the U.S. significantly contributed to the substantial reduction of akey measure of economic performance, Okun’s misery index, for theU.S. and Canada over the period 1979 to 1988. The misery index (ordiscomfort index), first proposed by economist Arthur Okun, is definedas the sum of the inflation rate and the unemployment rate. The inflationrate measures the rate of increase of the cost of living (as measuredby the consumer price index), and the unemployment rate measuresthe proportion of the labor force not currently employed. As describedbelow, the misery index also may be viewed as a measure of one of themost important economic dimensions of the quality of life.The level of the misery index reflects how well the national economyis doing with respect to the three dimensions of economic performancewidely regarded as most important by policy makers and economists—unemployment, inflation, and economic growth (Dornbusch & Fischer,1988, p. 8). The misery index directly measures the degree to whichsociety is plagued by the “twin evils” of inflation and unemployment.But since faster economic growth contributes to lower unemployment,movements in the misery index also reflect the economy’s rate of economicgrowth. 3 The rate of economic growth here is defined as the rateof growth of total national output after adjusting for inflation, or thegrowth of “real” gross national product (GNP). Because reduction ofinflation and unemployment and the promotion of economic growth417