"Gross National Happiness" Highlights

Here are some of the highlights of Dr. Michael Givel's presentation last night at Science Cafe.

First, he discussed Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which was invented by Simon Kuznets in the 1930s as a measure of total economic production. GDP is calculated as the sum of consumer spending, gross investment, government spending, and the net trade (exports minus imports) of a nation. He pointed out that Kuznets himself warned that GDP should not be used as a measure of the success or failure of a socioeconomic program. Another economist, Easterlin, in 1974 pointed out that the correlation between happiness and income exists only in the short term, and that all previous studies on the subject had been short term studies, rather than longitudinal studies. His work suggested that happiness rests on more complex factors, such as family, work, and spiritual matters. Based on his work, several other indices were developed that incorporate GDP and other quantities such as infant mortality, longevity, literacy, etc. A few examples of the diverse set of indices that exist are the UN Human Development Index, the Genuine Progress Indicator, and the Happy Planet Index. Givel plans to detail these indices in his forthcoming book.

Next, Givel gave some background on Bhutan, which was formed in 1616 AD by the Tibetan monk Shabdrung, after he was driven from Tibet by a political rival. Bhutan was a Buddhist theocracy until 1907, when a hereditary monarchy was formed, with the first king being elected by religious and secular leaders. In 1972, the fourth king declared that "Gross National Happiness" was more important than GDP for the Bhutanese people, as a means of making progress, but also keeping with cultural (Buddhist) values. In 2008, Bhutan became a constitutional monarchy, with an elected Parliament and Prime Minister. In the past, Bhutan has been criticized for human rights violations, which took the form of expelling a large minority of Hindus from the country into refugee camps in the mountains. Several nations have taken these refugees in, though Bhutan remains unrecognized by the US government officially.

Gross National Happiness has evolved from a vague concept to something more rigorously defined that is currently being measured by the Bhutanese government. Originally there were four "pillars": sustainable growth, cultural preservation, ecological protection, and good governance. These were expanded into nine "domains", and are currently being measured by 72 unweighted survey questions. The results of the 2007 - 2008 polling yielded a GNH score of .805. I've been looking around trying to understand what that number means, but the best I can do is to say that it's some standardized measure of what percentage of the population is "happy", according the standards in the questions. An important sidenote is that the GNH score for the "education" portion of the questions is much lower, only 0.5 or so.

There was a lot of vigorous discussion about how meaningful these subjective measures are, compared to other measures that have more objective components. On some level, this is a philosophical argument, because one could say that a person who "doesn't know what they're missing" might be happier than someone who has lots of stuff. Historically, though, it definitely seems that consumerism doesn't ultimately lead to a happier culture, as measured by rates of depression, suicide, violent crime, drug abuse, and the like. As human beings, it seems that we need basic needs met, which include material needs, but also needs for less tangible things like community, purpose, and family.