Gross National Happiness is the counterpart of Gross National Income. This is the goal of the government of Bhutan (which included the concept in its constitution in 2008), prioritizing quality of life and measuring it using a number of indicators.

The first ‘Gross National Happiness’ conference in Bhutan in 2004 was organized with Dutch help. For several years now, the Netherlands and Bhutan had a unique development cooperation treaty based on ‘reciprocity’. Although the Netherlands provided donor funds, Bhutan had the right to give back to the donor something that was valuable from their perspective. One of the topics on which Bhutan could serve the ‘rich’ West was the theme of ‘gross national happiness’. After this groundbreaking conference, with 80 participants (30 from abroad), several international GNH conferences followed.

This international exchange led to the submission of a resolution on happiness to the UN. First, resolution 65/309 “Happiness: towards a holistic approach to development” was adopted. It urged Member States to follow Bhutan’s example and measure happiness and well-being. Subsequently, the first World Happiness Report was issued during a ‘High Level Meeting’ and shortly after the meeting, resolution 66/28 declared March 20 as ‘International Day of Happiness’.

Nine Domains

GNH’s nine domains are psychological well-being, health, time use, education, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standards. Each domain is composed of subjective (survey-based) and objective indicators. The domains are weighted equally, but the indicators within each domain differ in weight. According to the World Happiness Report 2019, Bhutan is ranked 95th out of 156 countries. The Netherlands came in sixth place, after Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland and Norway.

Several academics have noted that “the values underlying GNH’s individual pillars are defined as distinctly Buddhist” and that “GNH constructs Buddhism as the core of the country’s (Bhutan) cultural values.” However, Bhutan has been criticized for using the GNH instrument to distract from ethnic cleansing and human rights violations it committed before becoming democratic in 2008. Previously, the government carried out mass ethnic cleansing of ethnic Nepalis with the Hindu faith.

Others point out that the ranking results are counter-intuitive when it comes to some dimensions, for example if the suicide rate is used as a metric for measuring unhappiness (the opposite of happiness), then some of the countries included in the top of the happiest countries in the world are also in the top 20 with the highest suicide rates in the world.

However, despite the criticism, the concept of Gross National Happiness broadens the view of well-being and puts it at the center. This is a valuable contribution at a time when the emphasis is on economic prosperity and psychological well-being was often ignored.

See this video about the Gross National Happiness.