The spread of Gross National Happiness

You’ve likely heard of the book “The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World,” by Eric Weiner. And you may have heard about the Himalayan country of Bhutan and its goal of measuring and improving something called Gross National Happiness. What do these things have in common? Well, apart from the fact that Weiner visited and wrote about Bhutan in his book (which is a fun read, by the way), the author just penned an article for World Hum discussing the spread of the Gross National Happiness concept to larger and more developed countries.

People travel. We know that. Stuff travels, too, of course. So do germs. Less obvious is the fact that ideas also travel. They don’t always travel well, and their on-time performance is no better than your average U.S. airline. But, still, travel they do—and often in expected ways.

Take French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s recently proposed “happiness index.” The traditional measure of a nation’s wealth, Gross Domestic Product, is woefully inadequate, Sarkozy declared, and promptly ordered French bureaucrats to take into account factors such as quality of life, the environment and (gasp!) vacation time. What the world needs, Sarkozy said in so many words, is not Gross National Product but Gross National Happiness.

Hmmm, this sounds familiar. As you may know, Bhutan, a geopolitical speck tucked away in the Himalayas, adopted exactly that policy—Gross National Happiness—back in the 1970s…

Call it the trickle-up theory of ideas. Big ideas often start in small nations. For instance,  the wildly successful practice of micro-lending was born not in London or Tokyo but rural Bangladesh. Why? Necessity, yes. But another reason, I think, is that small, off-the-map countries have less to lose. If Bhutan proposes something like Gross National Happiness people might snicker but they’re not likely to think of any less of Bhutan. Partly, this is because they had never thought of Bhutan at all. And partly it’s because we expect global outliers to come up with wacky ideas.

So I’m glad that Bhutanese happiness has traveled to France. Let’s hope the journey doesn’t end there.

In his article, Weiner makes a good case for the relevance of happiness as a measuring stick for policymakers, and he traces its spread from the Himalayas to the West. It may be quite a while before an idea like this catches on in the U.S., but it’s an intriguing concept and, in any case, Weiner is an engaging writer when discussing the world we live in.

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