Gross National Happiness

In continuing to discuss evidence-based public policy making, Kate Oakley and her masters class at QUT began by revisiting the work of Richard Florida and his Creative Class Index. Based on Talent, Technology and Tolerance combining this Index provides a measure of how prepared and fertile and environment is to socially and commercially benefit from the growth of creative industries.

Kate also described a new measure of the Creativity Index being designed and deployed in Hong Kong. This is based on the 5Cs of:

Human capital
Creative capital
Cultural capital
Social capital
Institutional capital

It provides for the outputs of creativity to be measured in more than purely monetary terms.

A broad discussion of the importance of the measurement of social capital ensued.

An interesting aside again caught my attention. This was Kate’s reference to Bhutan as the only nation on earth that measures its overall performance not by Gross National Product but by Gross National Happiness. Some more links, here, here and here.

Much has changed in Bhutan over the past three decades, thanks in part to the encroachment of Western culture through television and, more recently, the Internet. But the nation maintains its unconventional yardstick of success.  The prime minister frames his annual report to the National Assembly in terms of progress toward the "four pillars" of GNH: the -

promotion of equitable and sustainable socio-economic development,
preservation and promotion of cultural values,
conservation of the natural environment, and
establishment of good governance

Bhutan, say an increasing number of psychologists and economists, may have a point.

An extraordinary measure in an extraordinary country. It’s easy to assume that the game’s over and all the world is embracing the universal teachings of Googalism, The Golden Arches, Microsoftology and the Church of the Bottom Line. It’s nice to know that we can still be surprised and delighted by little outbreaks of human ‘illogic’ and the search for happiness.

Comments

[The Heretik]

I like this stat, Paul.