Gross National Happiness - the economic and social benefits of happy citizens

Whilst doing some research on the benefits of teaching Positive Psychology for a school, I came across The Happiness Institute which is led by a Chief Happiness Officer and based in Australia.

Their website contains an array of fascinating and thought-provoking findings around the benefits of happiness. Some are specifically relevant for schools e.g.:

• Happy teenagers go on to earn substantially more income fifteen years later than less happy teenagers, equating for income, grades, and other obvious factors.
• Learning optimism at ages 10-12 halves the rate of depression as these school children go through puberty.
• Self-discipline is twice as good a predictor of high school grades as IQ.

Others include:

• Women who display genuine smiles to the photographer at age eighteen go on to have fewer divorces and more marital satisfaction than those who display fake smiles.
• Externalities (e.g., weather, money, health, marriage, religion) totalled together account for no more than 15% of the variance in life satisfaction.
• The pursuit of meaning and engagement are much more predictive of life satisfaction than the pursuit of pleasure.
• Economically flourishing corporate teams have a ratio of at least 3 to 1 of positive statements to negative statements in business meetings, whereas stagnating teams have a much lower ratio; flourishing marriages, however, require a ratio of at least 5:1.
• How you respond to good events that happen to your spouse is a better predictor of future love and commitment than how you respond to bad events.
• Optimistic people are much less likely to die of heart attacks than pessimists, controlling for all known physical risk factors.

Almost all research studies apparently point towards a few key variables determining happiness. Happy people tend to:

• Have clearer life goals and a sense of purpose
• Live healthier
• Think more optimistically
• Have more and better quality relationships with others
• Know and use their strengths.

What might all of this mean for public policy?

David Cameron has often expressed interest in the General Wellbeing (GWB) agenda in the UK. Speaking at the Google Zeitgeist Europe conference he said "Wellbeing can't be measured by money or traded in markets. It's about the beauty of our surroundings, the quality of our culture and, above all, the strength of our relationships. Improving our society's sense of wellbeing is, I believe, the central political challenge of our times."

We have a while to go before we emulate Bhutan. Since 1972 Bhutan has measured Gross National Happiness (GNH) instead of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In 2008, they implemented a GNH Index developed by The Centre for Bhutan Studies to “reflect GNH values, set benchmarks, and track policies and performances of the country”. They argue that “public policies are needed to educate citizens about collective happiness. People can make wrong choices that lead them away from happiness. Right policy frameworks can address and reduce such problems from recurring on a large scale.” 

An eclectic range of indicators cover nine dimensions of the GNH index:

• Psychological wellbeing (e.g. taking account of karma in daily life where considering karma less than daily is viewed as ‘deprived’)
• Ecology (e.g. knowing names and species of local plants and animals where not knowing them is viewed as ‘deprived’)
• Health (e.g. number of healthy days in the past 30 days where less than 26 is viewed as ‘deprived’)
• Education (e.g. historical literacy (knowledge on local legend and folk stories) where less than ‘good knowledge’ is viewed as ‘deprived’)
• Culture (e.g. teaching children importance of impartiality. Part of ‘Value Transmission Index’ where seeing it as any less than ‘very important’ is viewed as ‘deprived’)
• Living Standards (e.g. difficulty in contributing to the community festivals where any level of difficulty experienced is viewed as ‘deprived’)
• Time Use (e.g. sleep hours where any less than 8 is viewed as ‘deprived’)
• Community Vitality (e.g. neighbours helping each other in the community where any response less than ‘always’ is viewed as ‘deprived’)
• Good Governance (e.g. performance of central government in reducing income gap where any performance rating less than ‘excellent’ is viewed as a failure)

The United Kingdom has much to learn from the mountain kingdom.