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Happiness is actually quite literally the central economic issue.
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This is true, see, for example, "utility." Its what drives all economic exchanges.
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But utility and happiness are not the same thing. Happiness is a cardinal and measurable emotional state of being. Utility, on the other hand, is an ordinal measure of worth that an individual assigns to a good or service. The most preferable choices do not necessarily cause happiness. In fact, they frequently don't.
Economics is about the production, distribution and consumption of scarce resource value. Value is known only through preference;
not happiness. Nor is happiness a particularly scarce resource! Read
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl if you don't believe me. Happiness is cultivated by developing an appreciative, thankful and positive outlook on life, not by owning more goodies. (Yes, people who own more goodies are more likely to be happy, but if you look at the differences in cardinal happiness by economic bracket, the intra-bracket variances of happiness FAR surpass the inter-bracket variances.)
Happiness is also not the most important thing in everyone's life. If it were, all people would always prioritize it over everything else, but they don't. Our human drives lead us in many different directions, and who are we to tell people what the meaning of their lives should be?