The pursuit of happiness

I recently read a travel piece in my favourite magazine, NUVO, in which the author described his experience in the small kingdom of Bhutan. Located on the eastern end of the Himalayan mountains, this wee landlocked country has a population of about 670, 000. And like Canada and the U.S., Bhutan has traditional methods to measure the growth within its borders.

But what does 0.6% GDP growth mean if everybody in the country is sad? This is where Bhutan is leading the pack – they measure Gross National Happiness. Basically, it’s a way to measure quality of life in what they believe is a more holistic expression.

GNH is calculated by the wellness of the Bhutanese people in each of these categories: economic, physical, mental, environmental, workplace, social and political wellness.

One can’t help wonder though just how detached the GNH is from pure economic growth. I’m pretty sure there must have been serious implications in some, if not all, of those categories when the numbers came in at the end of 2007: 17% GDP growth. What?! Based solely on this number, one would expect even environmental wellness to improve as money seemingly blossomed on trees.

Alas, if we do go solely by economic stats, Bhutan remains one of the world’s poorest countries. But that’s the whole thing with GNH I guess – it’s not supposed to be all about the numbers. And since no one else has a GNH to compare it to, technically speaking that makes the Bhutanese the happiest people in the world.