Recalculating Happiness in a Himalayan Kingdom (NYT)

[YankeyMCC]

I read about this last year but the NY Times has a piece about this experiment in Gross National Happiness today:



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THIMPHU, Bhutan — If the rest of the world cannot get it right in these unhappy times, this tiny Buddhist kingdom high in the Himalayan mountains says it is working on an answer.
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“You see what a complete dedication to economic development ends up in,” he said, referring to the global economic crisis. “Industrialized societies have decided now that G.N.P. is a broken promise.”

Under a new Constitution adopted last year, government programs — from agriculture to transportation to foreign trade — must be judged not by the economic benefits they may offer but by the happiness they produce.
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Specifically, the government has determined that the four pillars of a happy society involve the economy, culture, the environment and good governance. It breaks these into nine domains: psychological well-being, ecology, health, education, culture, living standards, time use, community vitality and good governance, each with its own weighted and unweighted G.N.H. index.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/world/asia/07bhutan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[Karenina]

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