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Coinciding
with the coronation of the 5th King of Bhutan, His Majesty Jigme Khesar
Namgyel Wangchuck, in November 2008, the Royal Government of Bhutan has adopted
the GNH index. The index was inaugurated and launched by Lyonchhen Jigmi Y. Thinley,
Prime Minister of Bhutan,
on 24.11.2008. The purpose of the GNH index is to reflect GNH values, set benchmarks,
and track policies and performances of the country. The GNH index was developed
by the Centre for Bhutan Studies, a non-aligned and non-profit research institution
based in
Thimphu, Bhutan
.
GNH Origin
The
5th King of Bhutan, His Majesty Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, popularly
known as King Khesar, proclaimed that fulfilling the vision of GNH will be one of
the four main responsibilities of his reign in his Royal Address of 17 December
2006. His Majesty King Khesar underlined
that the ultimate goal for social, economic, political changes in
Bhutan
is fulfillment of GNH. His Majesty the King has said that a GNH society means the
creation of an enlightened society in which happiness and well-being of all people
and sentient beings is the ultimate purpose of governance. His Majesty The King
reemphasized that
again in his Coronation Address on 7th November 2008:
The
4th King of Bhutan, HM Jigme Singye Wangchuck, promulgated GNH since
the beginning of his reign in 1972. Happiness of the people was made the guiding
goal of development. The exact phrase Gross National Happiness is more important
than Gross Domestic Product was coined by His Majesty the 4th King of
Bhutan, who is the author of GNH. The fact that he said GDP needed to be channeled
towards happiness in 1970s and 1980s was quite new. Since then, GNH has attracted
attention, and opinion around the world has started to converge on happiness as
a collective goal.
In
the reign of the 4th King, the actual road map for good development in terms of
laws and policies consistent with GNH were developed. He believed that happiness
is an indicator of good development and good society. He also believed in the legitimacy
of public deliberation, public discussion, and public opinion in defining any goal,
including GNH, through democracy and enlightened citizenship. Hence, full parliamentary
democracy was introduced in 2008 with the declaration of the Constitution of the
Kingdom of Bhutan
, although decentralization policies prepared the people for parliamentary democracy
from 1970s onwards.
Need for GNH index
Across the world, indicators focus largely on market
transactions, covering trade, monetary exchange rates, stockmarket, growth, etc. These dominant, conventional indicators,
generally related to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) reflect quantity of physical output
of a society. GDP, along with a host of supporting indicators, is the most widely
used indicator. Yet GDP is heavily biased towards increased production and consumption,
regardless of the necessity or desirability of such outputs, at the expense of other
more holistic criterion. It is biased against conservation since it does not register
conservation or stocks.
Indicators determine policies. The almost universal
use of GDP-based indicators to measure progress has helped justify policies around
the world that are based on rapid material progress at the expense of environmental
preservation, cultures, and community cohesion.
Indicators embody values. In general, policy makers
tend to implement policies or programmes based on current international development
trends, without taking into consideration the values that lie behind such trends.
One way to overcome this tendency is by recognizing the fact that between values
and policy implementation stand indicators. Values, policies and programmes are
mediated by indicators.
Indicators capture the imagination and help convince
lay people about the direction of the countrys goals and development objectives,
but it is not always easy for the people to discern that indicators are not value
neutral, and that values and principles underlie and determine programmes and policies.
Indicators actually drive society in certain directions
and even determine the policy agendas of governments. Not only decision makers,
but ordinary citizens, tend to take social or economic programmes at face-value,
and accept proposed policy implementation without examining the ultimate values
underlying those programmes. But indicators
can help bridge that gap.
As many contemporary indicators of progress and development
do not reflect GNH adequately, the Royal Government of Bhutan directed the Centre
for Bhutan Studies (CBS) to develop GNH index, which will provide appropriate indicators
for Bhutanese development.
The Centre for Bhutan Studies constructed a single number
index for Gross National Happiness that can be broken down into individual component
indicators that are useful for different sectors for planning and technical purposes
at the ministerial and departmental levels.
Although GNH is a complex concept and ideal, for practical
application, GNH philosophy had to be translated into a metric system. The government
expressed the need for GNH indicators because without some kind of measurement system,
GNH cannot guide practical policies and programmes.
Left at the level of inspirational discourse, imprecision will allow many
conventional indicators to play unwitting roles in a GNH society.
GNH indicators are also needed to foster vision and
a sense of common purpose. Left at the plane of vision, GNH cannot specify the practical
programmes and resources needed to attain those visions in quantitative terms. In
this respect, screening tools for projects and policies developed by the Centre
for
Bhutan
are expected to used for selection of policies and programmes, which are aligned
with GNH. People clarify their vision by specifying targets and indicators that
serve to point to areas of weakness and strength. Indicators serve as convenient
instruments and yardsticks of evaluation over time.
GNH indicators can become tools of accountability. The
sense of common purpose embodied in a coherent set of indicators enables ordinary
men and women to more readily judge, hold accountable their leaders, by checking
whether these the targets are being fulfilled.
Without a common vision concretized through indicators, each individual merely
looks to his or her own ends, even though welfare is a shared pursuit. Not only
do GNH indicators assist in building vision, they are instrumental to that vision
being held in common by all citizens, building a notion of greater interdependence
across time and over space.
Once people are familiar with GNH indicators, they can
have a practical effect on consumer and citizens behaviour.
The behaviour changing function can emerge in significant ways when there
are appropriate indicators that direct attention towards both the causes of problems
and the manner in which behaviour and decisions can prevent and solve those problems. This potential behaviour changing function
of GNH indicators can be valuable. For example, certain indicators for GNH gauge
the prevalence rates of negative and positive emotions, from compassion to anger.
The level of trust, volunteerism and safety can also be tracked. Information on
their prevalence rates will influence peoples behaviour as they begin to gauge
their own traits against the national trends.
To qualify as a valid indicator of GNH, an indicator
with respect to any variable has to have either a positive or a negative influence
on well-being and happiness. The direction of causality on happiness and well-being
must be clear. For examples, less crime, illness, and air pollution have a more
positive influence on happiness than more crime, illness, and pollution.
GNH indicators include both objective and subjective
dimensions of life. The construction of an index should give equal weight to both
the functional aspects of human society as well as the emotive side of human experience.
To give just one example, peoples perceptions of their own safety and security
are as important in determining happiness as objective crime statistics. That balance
allows good representation of information between the objective and the subjective.
When measuring objective conditions such as educational
and medical facilities, or room ratios etc., measure of the psychological or subjective
experience that accompanies this condition is important. For example, a student
attends a school that scores highly in the conventional educational statistics,
but he/she subjectively views the educational experience as entirely deficientthe
teachers might be oppressive, or the classroom tense.
In other words, the process of obtaining the education, including the classroom
experience, does not promote a sense of well-being in the student, despite the schools
apparent high objective performance. Self reporting of experiences along with objective
statistics therefore provides a more accurate picture of well-being than the objective
statistics alone.
As indicators reflect values, and shape programmes,
they become a vital link in providing feed-back on the effectiveness of existing
policies and programmes and feed-forward into programme implementation, thereby
allowing the values they embody to be infused into policies and programmes in a
broad based manner. Thus, in the case
of using GNH indicators as evaluative tools, they can be used not only to check
whether programmes are consistent with GNH indicators but also to create conditions
for a coherent, organic relationship between professed values on the one hand and
actual policies, programmes and projects on the other. The ramification of pursuing
such an organic relationship should be recognized for the polity of
Bhutan
as a whole: if it is done successfully, it means that the countrys economic, political,
social, environmental, cultural and technological environments will be penetrated
by GNH values, and that there will be a natural coherence to the countrys policies
that reflect its cherished values.
At the same time, from a Bhutanese cultural perspective,
it must be understood that the subjective versus objective distinction is merely
a heuristic device that does not in any fundamental sense represent what is basic
to the nature of reality. The interdependence
of all things, and the non-abiding self of everything, is a key concept. The conventional
subjective versus objective division is an abstraction from what is actually inter-relational.
For GNH indicators, this cultural concept means that seeing everything as relational
is more useful than seeing them as separate categories. In fact, happiness itself
dwells in the experience of quality of relationship. Thus, the various domains are
not simply separate conditions of happiness in and of themselves. Rather, it is
the intimate inter-relationship among these domains that is significant.
The GNH index construction aimed at a deeper representation
of well-being than conventional indicators. The distinction between subjective and
objective is but an abstraction from reality, given that from a Buddhist view, they
do not exist. What exists in a fundamental way is relationality (as opposed to subject
and object) at all levels, which can only
be assessed by a broad range of social, economic, cultural, and environmental indicators. Seen in this way, happiness and well-being
is ultimately a way of being that is affected by and affects relational quality,
which changes in meaning over time with deepening sensitivities to the world around
us and with our understanding of what is important or valuable for us and for all
sentient beings.
GNH as Goal
Happiness
is a subjectively felt public good.
Happiness
is a public good, as all human beings value it. Hence, the government of
Bhutan
takes the view that it cannot be left exclusively to private individual devices
and strivings. If a governments policy framework, and thus a nations macro-conditions,
is adverse to happiness, happiness will fail as a collective goal. Any government
concerned with happiness must create conducive conditions for happiness in which
individual strivings can succeed.
In this
context, 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.
There are
many entities, such as the corporations and other organizations, above the individual
level that make choices and decisions that impact collective happiness.
Individuals are relatively less powerful to redress decisions of big organizations
if they are contrary to the goal of collective happiness.
During the
consumption of goods and services, the measure of what gives the people happiness
will be relative, either to what others are consuming or to what one had the year
before. This fact implies that there are negative externalities to happiness associated
with consumption that needs to be curbed. Public policy instruments have to correct
externalities when they are present in a large scale. At the same time, to cultivate
a positive psychology which does not work always on invidious comparison is important
for personal development.
Our understanding
of how the mind achieves happiness affects our experience of happiness by influencing
the means we choose in striving towards it. In some branches of the behavioral sciences,
the mind is conceived of as an input-output device responding to external stimuli. One consequence of this model is that
happy and pleasurable feelings are seen as dependent solely upon external stimuli.
Happiness is perceived as a direct consequence of sensory pleasures. With such an
overemphasis on external stimuli as the source for happiness, it isnt surprising
that individuals are led to believe that being materialistic will increase their
happiness.
But there
is a contrary tradition to the external stimuli based happiness that point to a
different source of happiness, showing that pleasurable feelings will be generated
by shutting down sensory inputs and the related mental chatter. This involves secular
meditation whereby the individual experiences the subject itself, as opposed to
the subject perceiving external stimuli. There is much less external input to happiness
through contemplative method. Long enough meditation may lead the brain structure
(neural pathways) to be changed such that calmness and contentment will be a personality
trait. In other words, the mental faculties can be trained towards happiness. From a contemplative perspective, extreme reliance on
externally derived pleasure distracts the individual from inner sources of happiness,
elevating the latter.
When this cultural view is applied, stable and sustainable
economies can be termed successful.
An economy that is continually growing at an unsustainable rate may be seen as a
failure due to its inability to promote detachment from the proliferation of wants. Sustainable and stationary economy may
signal that stability in wants and psychological stability have been achieved among
the consumers.
GNH encourages individuals to see all things as interdependent
with all other things. In order to achieve collective happiness, the principle of
interdependence needs to be taken on by everyone.
Members of a GNH society would cultivate a third eye, which can elevate our
vision beyond individual self-interest to address the happiness of all, as a collective
goal. The third eye metaphorically
represents our potential to see all things as interdependent across time and space.
Equity is central to GNH. The perception of happiness that doesnt
take into account the needs of others happiness is irresponsible and egocentric,
and the pursuit of such happiness is likely to be unethical. Happiness blossoms
through enhanced relationships, arising unbidden when relationships improve. In
this sense, the whole of development is a progress in relationships, not of individuals.
Institutions
Implementing GNH
The
constitution of
Bhutan
describes the state and the government as having responsibilities to pursue GNH.
GNH should become a serious arbitrator of public policies and plans.
Correspondingly, there are institutions to apply GNH to policy and programme
formulation.
His
Majesty Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck established a new institutional structure
of GNH in January 2008 when the GNH Commission was founded in order to function
as the apex strategic body for planning national development. The decision to open
GNH committees at the ministerial, dzongkhag (district) and gewog (block) levels
was also announced by the Prime Minister at that time. These changes more clearly
define the structures and processes of decision making unique to a GNH state. These institutions and processes will
forge stronger and clearer links between concepts of GNH and their application to
policy and programme. Because of these initiatives, GNH will increasingly shape
the nature of
Bhutan
s political economy, legal foundation, health and education systems much more distinctively
in the course of time.
The
ruling party, Druk Phuensum Tshogpa, have committed itself to pursuing GNH. The
government is therefore fine tuning their policies and plans according to the development
philosophy of GNH.
Survey for
Developing GNH Indicators
The
Good Governance Exercise carried out by the Royal Government in 2005 mandated the
Centre for Bhutan Studies to develop indicators for Gross National Happiness (GNH).
Financial support was obtained from the Royal Government of Bhutan and United Nations
Development Programme,
Thimphu
, for both a pilot and the final survey. Between September 2006 and January 2007,
the pilot survey was administered on randomly chosen 350 respondents aged 15 and
above to test the feasibility and robustness of GNH pilot questionnaire. The districts
surveyed were Paro, Chukha, Punakha, Trongsa, Bumthang, Mongar, Lhuentse, Sarpang
and
Thimphu
. Initially, it took 7-8 hours to interview one respondent. The places surveyed
ranged from remote, to semi-urban, to urban populations of
Bhutan
. It took three months to complete the pilot survey.
The
pilot survey questionnaire, which was found to be too lengthy, was pared down to
a questionnaire that took half a day to interview in the final survey carried out
from December 2007 to March 2008. The survey was carried out in 12 of the 20 districts:
Dagana, Tsirang, Wangdiphodrang, Samtse, Zhemgang, Pemagatshel, Samdrupjongkhar,
Tashigang, Tashiyangtse, Gasa, Haa and
Thimphu
. Unfortunately, resources were insufficient to carry out surveys in the remaining
eight districts. A total of 950 respondents were interviewed in the 12 districts.
The questionnaire covered the key areas affecting the values and principles of GNH,
roughly divided into the domains of psychological well-being, health, time use,
education, culture, good governance, ecology, community vitality and living standards.
The survey questionnaire included one hundred and eighty eight questions. The questionnaire
consisted of a mixture of objective, subjective, and open-ended questions. The subjective
voice that has been relatively neglected in social sciences as a whole and in indicators
in particular has been restored in GNH indicators to produce a balanced representation
of information between the objective and the subjective. The indicators of GNH were
estimated from the primary data generated from the survey carried out from December
2007 to March 2008.
Dimensions
and Indicators of GNH
The
efforts towards developing a GNH index was undertaken to provide
Bhutan
with a valuable set of indicators that can be utilized in making its development
efforts more holistic and harmonious in its goals and means.
The
single number GNH index and its component indicators provide
Bhutan
with three different levels and types of indicators:
-
GNH
status indicators. Hundreds of such indicators have already been calculated from
the primary data.
-
GNH
demographic indicators. These indicators show distribution of GNH dimensions across
different social, economic and demographic groups.
-
GNH
causal and correlation indicators.
The
GNH index been designed to fulfill various criteria which are needed for periodic
national measure of happiness that is also relevant to national and district policy.
A
measure of Gross National Happiness might be presumed to comprise a single psychological
question on happiness such as Taking all things together, would you say you are:
Very happy, Rather happy, Not very happy, or Not at all happy. Another measure
is the subjective well being measure generated from a question such as On the scale
of one to ten, how would you rate yourself? One is not a happy person and 10 is
a very happy person. However, neither of these indicators are good multi-dimensional
measures of happiness. The objectives of the
kingdom of Bhutan
, and the Bhutanese understandings of happiness, are much broader than those that
are referred to as happiness in the Western literature. Under the title of happiness,
we include range of dimensions of human well-being. Some of these are quite traditional
areas of social concern such as living standard, health, and education. Some are
less traditional, such as time use, emotional well-being, culture, community vitality,
or environmental diversity.
The
Gross National Happiness index is generated to reflect the happiness and general
well-being of the Bhutanese population more accurately and profoundly than a monetary
measure. The measure will both inform Bhutanese people and the wider world about
the current levels of human fulfillment in
Bhutan
and how these vary across districts and across time, and will also inform government
policy.
The
GNH indicators have been designed to include nine core
dimensions that are regarded as components of happiness and well-being in
Bhutan
, and are constructed of indicators which
are robust and informative with respect to each of the dimensions. The nine dimensions
were selected on normative grounds, and
are equally weighted, because each dimension
is considered to be relatively equal in terms of equal intrinsic importance as a
component of gross national happiness. Within each dimension, several
indicators were selected that seemed likely to remain informative across
time, had high response rates, and were relatively uncorrelated. The nine dimensions
are:
1.
Psychological Well-being
2.
Time Use
3.
Community Vitality
4.
Culture
5.
Health
6.
Education
7.
Environmental Diversity
8.
Living Standard
9.
Governance
In
this perspective happiness comprises having sufficient achievements in each of
the nine dimensions.
Psychological
The
domain of psychological well-being as an end includes satisfaction
with all elements of life, life enjoyment, and subjective well-being. As collective happiness is the main
goal in a GNH society, psychological well-being is of primary importance in gauging
the success of the state in providing appropriate policies and services. Among component
indicators of the psychological well-being domain, general psychological distress
rate, prevalence rates of both negative emotions (jealousy, frustration, selfishness)
and positive emotions (generosity, compassion, calmness), spiritual activities like
meditation and prayers, and consideration of karmic effects in daily life were calculated.
The
psychological well-being index covered three areas:
General psychological distress indicators,
Emotional balance indicators, and
Spirituality indicators.
Time Use
The
domain of time use is one of the most effective windows on quality of life, as it
analyzes the nature of time spent within a 24-hour period, as well as activities
that occupy longer periods of time. An important function of tracking time use is
to acknowledge the value of non-work time for
happiness. The time available for non-work activities such as sleeping, personal
care, community
participation, education and learning, religious activities, social and cultural
activities, sports and leisure and travel can directly indicate diversity of activities
that add to rich life and contribute to levels of happiness.
Measurement of time, devoted unpaid work activities like care of children and sick members of household, and maintenance
of household, can provide a proxy measure of contribution made by unpaid activities
to welfare though the value of such activities are completely underestimated in
national accounts. In the GNH index, time use component was divided into benchmark
indicators of sleeping hours and of total working hours.
Community Vitality
The
domain of community vitality focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of relationships
and interactions within communities. It examines the nature of trust, belongingness,
vitality of caring relationships, safety in home and community, and giving and volunteering.
These indicators can track changes in adverse affects on community vitality. The
community vitality indicators consist of:
Family vitality indicator,
Safety indicator,
Reciprocity indicator,
Trust indicator,
Social support indicator,
Socialization indicator, and
Kinship density indicator.
Cultural Diversity
and Resilience
Maintenance
of cultural traditions has been one of
Bhutan
s primary policy goals, as traditions and cultural diversity contributes to identity,
values, and creativity. The domain of culture focuses on the diversity and strength
of cultural traditions. The domain takes into account the nature and number of cultural
facilities, language use patterns and diversity, and participation in community
festivities and traditional recreations.
The indicators estimate core values, and perception of changes in values and traditions.
The
indicators of cultural diversity and resilience consist of:
Dialect use indicator,
Traditional sports indicator,
Community festival indicator,
Artisan skill indicator,
Value transmission indicator, and
Basic precept indicator.
Health
The
health indicators assess the health status of the population, the determinants of
health and the health system. Health status indicators show information on self-rated
health, disabilities, body mass index, number of healthy days per month. Health
indicators also cover the prevalence of knowledge about HIV transmission and breast feeding practices. Lastly, barrier
to health services are assessed in terms of walking distance to the nearest health
facility, which includes both western and indigenous systems. Thus the health index
consists of:
Health status indicator,
Health knowledge indicator, and
Barrier to health indicator.
Education
Education
contributes to the knowledge, values, creativity, skills, and civic sensibility
of citizens. A domain such as education
is not intended merely to measure the success of education in and of itself, but
rather to assess the effectiveness of education in working towards the goal of collective
well-being. The domain of education looks at a number of factors: participation,
skills, among others. However, in the education index, a limited number of variables
could be included. The education index consists of:
Education attainment indicator,
Dzongkha language indicator, and
Folk and historical literacy indicator.
Ecological Diversity
and Resilience
By
examining the state of
Bhutan
s natural resources, the pressures on ecosystems, and different management responses,
the domain of ecological diversity and resilience is intended to describe the impact
of domestic supply and demand on
Bhutan
s ecosystems. However, since most of the objective measurements of ecological diversity
and resilience are surveyed by other agencies, GNH survey gathered information on
perceptual data on ecology. The ecological diversity and resilience indicators consist
of:
Ecological degradation indicator,
Ecological knowledge indicator, and
Afforestation indicator.
Living Standard
The
domain of living standards covers the basic economic status of the people.
The indicators assess the levels of income at the individual and household
levels, sense of financial security, room ratio, food security, house ownership.
The indicators were also constructed for economic hardships as shown by inability
to repairs houses, inability to contribute to community festivities, and purchase
of second hand clothes. Thus the living standard indicators consist of:
Income indicator,
Housing indicator,
Food security indicator, and
Hardship indicator.
Good Governance
The
domain of good governance evaluates how people perceive various government functions
in terms of their efficacy, honesty, and quality. The themes of indicators include
human rights, leadership at various levels of government, performance of government
in delivering services and controlling inequality and corruption, peoples trust
in media, judiciary, and police. Therefore, the indicators of good governance consist
of:
Government performance indicator,
Freedom indicator, and
Institutional trust indicator.
Method for GNH
Index Construction
The
Gross National Happiness Index (GNH) is constructed in 2 steps, one of which pertains
to identification and one to aggregation.[1]
We also describe the mechanism for breaking the index down to report dimensional
achievements for each district or group.
Identification
The
first step is to define whether each
household has attained sufficiency in each of the nine dimensions. This is done
by applying a sufficiency cutoff to each dimension. As this is an innovative methodology,
and is not familiar to most readers, we pause to explain.
In
poverty measurement, it is quite common to apply a poverty line, which distinguishes
people who do not have enough money from those who are non-poor. Of course income
poverty lines are very imperfect, but the concept of being able to distinguish people
who are poor is well-understood.
Bhutan
holds that it is possible to distinguish, additionally, between those people who
have attained sufficient level of achievement and those whose attainments fall
short of sufficiency.
Sufficiency
Cut-off
The
first part of the Gross National Happiness measure applies a sufficiency cutoff
to each indicator. The sufficiency cutoff is set, naturally, at a higher level than
a poverty line. In some indicators it is set at the top level of achievement for
that indicator. In other indicators it is set at a level that is deemed sufficient
for most people. A person is identified as having a
sufficient quality of life if his or her achievements in that indicator
meet or exceed the cutoff. If the achievements
do meet or exceed the cutoff, the persons actual achievements are replaced by the
sufficiency level. For example, if actual income were 1,000 and sufficiency cut-off
were 150, then the person would be treated as if they earned 150.
Thus achievements above the sufficiency
cutoff do not further increase someones
quality of life score. The level at which the sufficiency cutoff is set is a value
judgment, which can be a topic for public discussion, but the fact that it may be
difficult to set an exact cutoff should not obscure the reasonableness of setting
some sufficiency cutoff.
To
give a simple example, suppose some might think 9 years of education to be sufficient.
Others think that 16 years of education a University degree is sufficient. But
consider a person who has been in graduate school for 10 years but has still not
finished a doctorate, that is, who has been studying for 27 years. Do these many
years of schooling really contribute a great deal more to the persons happiness
than the first 12 or 16 years of education? Is the long-time student better off
than a genius who finished her doctorate in merely 3 years? The answer to this question
varies by person. For some scholars it might be deeply meaningful. For others education
might have been alienating. They will never finish the degree and later regard these
years as wasted. In this example, more years of education are not necessarily
better. Still, it may be possible to identify some
sufficient level of education, the attainment of which would correspond
to increased well-being for most people in the population.
The Gross National Happiness Index takes the position
that beyond a certain point, we dont need to keep adding in higher achievements
to the quality of life mechanically; we confine our attention somewhat to a middle
band of achievements that contribute significantly to human well-being for most
people.
The sufficiency cutoffs are applied as follows: The value
of each indicator in which a household attains sufficiency or above sufficiency
is given a 0. Subsequently all achievements that are less than sufficient are replaced
by the distances from the cut-offs. It is calculated by subtracting the actual achievement
from the sufficiency cutoffs, and that difference is divided by the sufficiency
cutoff itself. This way, the
depth (distances from the cutoffs) will rise if any poor person drops further away
from the sufficiency cutoff. For example, if the poverty
line is 8 and the achievement is 6, the gap is (8-6)/8, or 0.25. Further, in order
to take account of the severity of the insufficiency levels, the distances from
the cutoffs are squared. This reflects
the inequality of achievements among
the persons below the cutoffs, thereby placing a greater penalty to low achievements.
Now
how do we identify who is happy? The GNH takes what is known as the union approach
to identification in the literature on multidimensional measurement. That is, any
shortfall from sufficiency that any household experiences in any indicator within
any dimension is considered to depress Gross National Happiness. A person who has
achieved sufficiency in all 9 dimensions is considered happy.
Aggregation
The
second step is to aggregate the data
of the population a decomposable measure that is sensitive to the depth as well
as severity of achievements. That is, first we identify the shortfalls from gross
national happiness and calculate the squared distances from the cutoffs. The resulting
measure is the GNH.
GNH
= 1- Average squared distance from cutoff
Break
Down by Dimension
Having
calculated the Gross National Happiness index, it is very easy to break down the
index to identify how achievements in each dimension extend or dampen Gross National
Happiness. The number of indicators in each of the nine domains is different and
so, in order to avoid biasness the domains are attached with equal weights. For
instance, psychological wellbeing consists of 11 indicators. Each of the 11 indicators
would be assigned a weight of 1/11. The domain index would then be 1- Average squared
distance from cutoff for 11 indicators.
In sum:
We
calculate the GNH. It will merely be one number. How can we make sense of the measure?
First,
we compare the GNH in different districts surveyed, to see which districts have
higher GNH scores.
Second,
we can compare the GNH across time to see if GNH is decreasing or increasing after
we conduct future surveys.
Third,
we decompose the GNH by dimension (or
indicator), by district, by gender, by occupation, by age group etc. In this way
we can see how shortfalls in GNH vary
across disaggregated levels. This information reveals immediately in what dimensions
of life shortfalls from sufficiency are
most acute.
Fourth,
we track the decomposition of GNH across time, to see in which dimensions sufficiency
is increasing, and also to track whether or not it is decreasing in any dimensions.
Fifth,
we study the average severity of deprivations, to identify whether the
gap below the sufficiency cutoff is deepening or narrowing across time.
In
these ways, the GNH can be used as an instrument of policy, and can capture a great
deal of interconnected information that can not otherwise be presented so succinctly.
Example of construction
of the GNH
Step 1. Apply sufficiency cutoff to obtain insufficiency headcounts
Sufficiency
cutoff
[3 3
26 3
3
11 2
2
2]
A
person is insufficient if in a given indicator, the achievement is less than the
respective cutoff. Whether the data are cardinal or ordinal, we construct the matrix
A, by recoding the entries into either 1 i.e. if they fall below the sufficiency
cutoffs and into 0 if they have achieved equal or above the cutoffs. For the above
example, the matrix A would give the following B matrix.
Step 2. Calculation of distance from cutoff
The
distances from cutoffs are calculated for the entries of persons who are insufficient
(denoted by 1) by using the following formula:
For
variables where minimum are zeros such as voluntary days and amount donated, distance
from cutoff is calculated by (sufficiency cutoff- actual) / (sufficiency cutoff).
For
variables where minimum is one, distance from cutoff is calculated by (sufficiency
cutoff- actual) / (sufficiency cutoff) - (one).
After
calculation of distances from the cutoffs, Matrix B would generate Matrix C:
Step 3. Squaring distance from
the cutoff
In
order to give a greater weight to low achievements, and place a stronger value on
equality, the distances from the cutoffs of each indicator may also be squared prior
to aggregation to emphasize the severity of insufficiency.
Step 4. Compute the GNH Index.
Step 4a. GNH Index = 1- Squared Distance from Cutoff
Step 4b. GNH Index = Average(1- squared distance from
cutoff) or 1- Average squared distance from cutoff
Hence in this case GNH Index
is: =(1+0.75+0.75+1+1+1+0.99+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+0.60+0.99+1+0.99+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1)/36
= 0.808
Break Down by Dimension
Matrix D comprises of the squared distances from cutoffs.
Lets say the first four indicators corresponding to first four columns belong to
psychological wellbeing dimension and the next five to culture.
In order to give equal weights to each dimension, each of the four indicators
in psychological wellbeing is assigned a weight of 0.25 and similarly, each of the
five indicators in culture is assigned 0.2. Then the weighted Matrix D is as follows:
Next,
the average squared distance from cutoff is calculated for each indicator in each
dimension.
[.25 .03125
.000625
0 0
.021
0 .05
.05]
So, GNH Index for psychological wellbeing
is 1 Sum of squared distances from cutoffs for four psychological wellbeing indicators.
Here, instead of average the sum of squared distances from cutoffs is calculated
because the weights add up to 1 in each dimension.
=1-
(.25+.03125+.000625+0)
=1-
.281875
=.718
Likewise,
for culture:
=1-
(0+.021+0+.05+.05)
=1-
.121
=.879
To
calculate the percentage contribution by each dimension to the final GNH index,
one sums the squared distances from cutoff in each dimension and divides this sum
by the total squared distances from cutoff experienced in the population.
The
new methodology for Gross National Happiness Index consist of
(i)
a cutoff identification method that identifies
sufficiency both in terms of achievements in each dimension, and achievements across
a range of dimensions and
(ii)
an aggregation methodology that satisfies a range of
desirable properties including decomposability.
The sufficiency cutoffs are set so that any person who
had achieved full sufficiency in every dimension would be regarded as fully happy.
The
measure seems to be understandable and easy to describe, because
it relies on a cutoff approach which is widely used in policy already. It can reflect
common sense notions of happiness in
that the dimensions and indicators directly were chosen because of their relevance
in the Bhutanese context. Furthermore this measure is specifically geared not just
to notice incremental changes over time, but also to
target, track changes, and guide policy. This is because the measure is
actually developed by considering the sector of the population who does
not enjoy a sufficient quality of life at present, and scrutinizing the
dimensions in which they fall short. The measure can be decomposed
by variables such as district or language group, and the quality of life can
then be broken down by dimension to identify
which dimensions show the highest shortfalls in different regions or groups.
This last characteristic makes it a good tool for tracking changes across time,
or for guiding policies to address specific needs of different groups efficiently.
It is technically solid, enjoying properties of dimensional monotonicity and
decomposability.
Acknowledgements
The
staff of the CBS have enjoyed the gracious patronage of His Majesty King Khesar
in the development of the GNH index and its institutionalization. All of us have
felt the inspiration radiated by His Majesty King Khesar. His speeches to the people
in general have been beacons to us. We would also like to thank the Prime Minister,
Jigmi Y. Thinley for his far reaching support to GNH.
I
would like to acknowledge my gratitude to many individuals who have helped me and the staff of the centre for Bhutan
Studies in the many years I have been at the CBS working on GNH. From abroad, I
would like to thank Nicholas Rosellini, Renata Lok Dessallin, Sabina Alkire, Emma
Maria Santos, Ron Colman, Michael Pennock, and Peter Hershock. Ron Colman helped
me extensively during the inception of survey instruments for GNH. But I wish to
pay special gratitude to Sabina Alkire for her visit to Bhutan, which led to substitution
of the methodology for construction of GNH index I adopted earlier by her innovative
aggregation method. I thank her for the input I received in explaining the new aggregation
method in this article. Each research staff of the CBS have played indispensable
roles in the preparation of the questionnaire, data entry and processing and analysis
with respect to the domains of GNH they were assigned. Kuenzang Lhadon coped admirably
with the strenuous processing of the huge data besides her other duties. Likewise
Tshoki Zangmo took on the crucial task of analyzing data. I would like to acknowledge
the contributions made by all the researchers of the Centre for Bhutan Studies.
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