Bhutan’s Approach to Happiness

In April 2015, I submitted a 100 page paper about Happiness and business as my final college thesis. Over the course of a few months, I personally interviewed seventeen social entrepreneurs, watched over a dozen TED Talks, attended half a dozen lectures, dissected ten case studies, read countless books and articles, and compiled over 200 pages of research. It was a brilliant project for my interests and I loved every second of it.

From the abstract: Positive psychology has jumped to the forefront of countless studies, books, and articles for one simple reason: Happiness matters to everyone. Business schools used to teach the ideology of profit above all else; Happiness and work were two opposing ideas. Fortunately, the tides are changing. From big businesses like Zappos to new non-profits, entrepreneurs are finally getting the message: positive company culture works. This project illustrates that it is possible to market a feeling. In this work, I explore how one can create an emotion-based movement which is ethically sound, sustainable, and impactful. This work is grounded in an examination of the basic science of Happiness and incorporates evidence from personal interviews with entrepreneurs for social change to show the steps they took to achieve success. 

While I could probably do an entire series on this work, I’d like this post to focus on one particular topic I studied and that is the tiny landlocked nation of Bhutan.

Located geographically between India and China (the two most populous nations in the world), Bhutan and its 784,000 people, per Britannica, rank 168th most populous (between Guyana and Luxembourg). Bhutan is the only carbon negative nation in the world and over 70% of the country is forest. (To be carbon negative is to have more carbon dioxide saved or stored than emitted.) It’s a majority Buddhist country and that is represented in their culture, art, and policies.

Bhutan jumped to my radar because of a bold idea—Gross National Happiness. Per the Oxford Department of International Development:

“The phrase ‘gross national happiness’ was first coined by the 4th King of Bhutan, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, in the late 1970s. The concept implies that sustainable development should take a holistic approach towards notions of progress and give equal importance to non-economic aspects of wellbeing and happiness. Since then, the idea of Gross National Happiness (GNH) has influenced Bhutan’s development policy, and also captured the imagination of others far beyond its borders. In creating the Gross National Happiness Index, Bhutan sought to create a measurement tool that would be useful for policymaking and create policy incentives for the government, NGOs, and businesses of Bhutan to increase societal wellbeing and happiness.”

Something I didn’t realize when I was first researching Bhutan a decade ago is that when His Majesty first questioned the idea that GDP alone could deliver Happiness and wellbeing to society he was still a teenage monarch. There’s something about that fact that I find extra special given my own work on Happiness began when I was a teenager.

According to the World Economic Forum, since the early 1980s (shortly after GNH was adopted), Bhutan has seen an average growth in annual GDP (gross domestic product, aka the total monetary value of all final goods and services produced within a country’s borders over a specific period of time) of 7.5%. Poverty levels have also declined from 36% in 2007 to 10% in 2019.

So how does GNH work? It’s more than just a buzzword. GNH is made of nine equally weighted domains:

1. Psychological wellbeing

2. Health

3. Time use and balance

4. Education

5. Cultural diversity and resilience

6. Good governance

7. Community vitality

8. Ecological diversity and resilience

9. Living standard

Beyond this, there are 38 sub-indexes, 72 indicators, and 151 variables that define and analyze Happiness. Together, they aim to emphasize different aspects of wellbeing and human flourishing.

Jumping back to the Oxford source, the Royal Government of Bhutan’s Centre for Bhutan and GNH Studies showed promising results from the 2022 GNH Index which represented 11,052 Bhutanese from every Dzongkhag (administrative district). In 2010, the GNH Index value was 0.743 (out of 1). In 2022, it jumped to 0.781, demonstrating a commitment to an environment that fosters Happiness (even in the face of economic downturns and the COVID-19 pandemic). If any of this is remotely interesting to you, there’s more graphs and insight into the research here. 

In working on this piece, I was deep diving into the Gross National Happiness Centre Bhutan’s website when I learned that there is text in Bhutan’s ancient legal code (from 1629) expressing that Bhutanese laws must promote Happiness for all sentient beings: “if the government cannot create Happiness for its people, then there is no purpose for government to exist.” 

I’d take that quote one step further. If we cannot create Happiness for one another, if we can not learn to love one another and greet every person with a smile, then what are we here for? 

I look forward to more time spent exploring Bhutan’s rich history with wellbeing and I look forward to sharing my findings with The Smile Project community.