Read the 1st two paragraphs on the origin of GNH at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_happiness
and watch a short 8’38’’ video on "Happiness in Bhutan" at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/4782636.stm
Other useful references:
1)http://tutor2u.net/economics/content/topics/livingstandards/measuring_sol.htm
2)http://www.bized.co.uk/virtual/dc/copper/theory/th11.htm
3) http://www.bized.co.uk/virtual/dc/farming/theory/th3.htm
You should then be able to engage your friends and respond to the following question:
1) Discuss whether Gross National Happiness is a good measure of living standards.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Gross National Happiness is not a good measure of living standards because this measure is very subjective.
ReplyDeleteTake for example, people in less developed countries such as Africa are happy because they are void of all the burdens and daily troubles that people in developed countries have (eg problems at work/school). But their living standards are a far cry from countries such as Singapore or USA.
Therefore it is not a good measure.
Gross National Happiness may be a good indicator to measure SOL because happiness is the ultimate desire of every human individual. Moreover, it includes different aspects like psychology which GDP and GNP have not covered. Also, sometimes the economic development may not lead to a better quality of life if people feel much more stressed and worried to earn money to support themselves and their families. In this way, GNH may be a good way to measure SOL.
ReplyDeleteHowever, GNH is hard to measure since it is subjective. The survey results collected will also be hard to analyse.
Why do we measure living standards? Simply put, we want to gauge the satisfaction of the people and what better way than to use Gross National Happiness (GNH) since it allows for us to know if the public views their present living standards are satisfcatory. GDP and GNP are merely figures that tell the economic growth of a country which is rather intangible to the general people; these figures are only useful to those deciding on whch areas to improve on so as to improve the living standards of the people. So for me, GNH is a good measure of living standards as it's the closest-to-ground measurement even though it may be hard to collect statistics.
ReplyDeleteIts nature's call for mankind that happiness represents a goal of continous seeking.Like Mr Thinley said,''happiness is the ultimate desire of every human individual'' and should represent the basis of every government policy. However, the effectiveness of GNH as a measure of SOL is questionable.
ReplyDeleteThis is mainly due to happiness being intangible. There is no precise way of measuring happiness level of a person and hence indicators used by countries like GDP per capita and literacy rate represents an assumption that money and better education respectively can bring more happiness to an individual which is not necessarily the case. There is always a trade-off when an attempt to bring more happiness is done and the happiness attained for one's self varies from individual to individual.
For example, like in the linked video, the introduction of television in Bhutan has brought about many happy TV addicts but at the same time unhappiness amongst others because time with family and communication among them has reduced significantly. This economic investment by the Bhutan government has brought about increased happiness to some but a decrease to others. Every single attempt to bring about happiness has a trade-off that needs to measured before it is to be executed.
However, using GNH as a basis of of every government policy does bring positive psychological impact to Bhutan. This is because the nation feels secure that the government is only concerned about the welfare of a country when making policies and not for any other reasons that may be deemed selfish or absurd. This gives people confidence in the government and hence promotes stability and peace in the country with a strong sense of unity amongst the people.
huixin says:
ReplyDeleteGNH is a good measure of living standards because it takes in account the non-monetary aspects that make people happy and thus allow them to live well. happiness is intangible so no amount of money can be put to it to measure how much it really is worth but everyone wants to be happy, it is what we are allowed to feel. therefore if everyone is happy, i think it will be safe to say that the country has high living standards because people are generally more satisfied with things.
however if every policy that the government makes is to depend on the GNH, the government body will have a difficult time governing the country and coming up with suitable policies that are beneficial to the citizens. it is difficult to gauge how much happiness is experienced so for us to use GNH as a measure of living standards, it might result in some inaccurate data.
Junliang:
ReplyDeleteGNH is defnitely a better SOL indicator than GDP as it measures a person's general well-being i.e their happiness and satisfaction of life.For example, a poor person can be satisfied and happy with his life and someone affluent may notbe so with his life due to social or psychological reasons. Hence, GDP does not wholly reflects his definition of high SOL. But it is true to a certain extent that GDP is a major component of GNH, especially in a competitive country like Singapore where people are surrounded by a wide variety of goods and services due to globalisation and trading. This makes people more demanding of their life as they will demand for goods of better quality once a certain level of desire is met.Yet on the other hand, countries with smaller range of goods and services due to lack of globalisation and trading like Africa are easily satisfied with their life as they are not exposed to the competitiveness of the outside world.Hence, GNP can only be used as an indicator of SOL only for countries like Africa as GDP is not a crucial factor for them whereas for countries like Singapore, GDP would be a better indicator for the general public as only a high GPD value would ensure that our satisfaction are met with new and better goods and services, only then our SOL can be high.
Another indicator to measure a country's general SOL can be the amount of pollution in the country. With globalisation and intense production level,it is an undeniable fact that now,the level of our SOL hinges on the amount of pollution. Even with a high GDP or low expectations of life, we cannot enjoy life if our health is in a bad condition.Thus,pollution level actually can be a more accurate indicator of SOL than GDP and GNH in most countries.
nurish lah. i typed so much then all disappear, so i retype all in a shorter version.
ReplyDeleteStandard of Living can be determined in 2 ways: Societal and personal.
Societal: Indicators of development such as GDP/capita, Literacy rate, Life expectancy, focus on tertiary/quaternary industries
(Reflects how developed and advanced a country is, neglecting the feelings and emotions of the people)
Personal: GNH, society can be advanced yet the people may not be happy due to stress, hectic pace of living, and other factors. (This, however, may not determine the advancement of a country. Morever, GNH may be biased and is not easy to measure accurately)
The best indicator would be one that takes into consideration both societal and personal effects. As such, both hard and soft factors are addressed.
GNH, though intuitively sounds right and appears to be a good measure of living standards, is actually questionable and flawed in many aspects simply because one is unable to measure happiness per se. GNH is also too heavily based on perceptions. For example, family violence statistics might look horrendously worse now as compared to the past for the simple reason that child abuse was once not considered a crime, and spousal abuse was hardly ever reported.
ReplyDeleteWith regards to Bhutan - it isn't really everyone's idea of a happy kingdom: statistics show that as of 2005, life expectancy is 54 years, one child in 10 dies before the age of 5, only 56% of males and half that number of females can read and write. And yet, it is supposed to be the role model for the rest of the world, with regards to national happiness.
Hence, I feel that GNH is not the best way to measure living standards.
GNH itsef is a good indicator of SOL because it measures the happiness level of the population in a certain country. A high standard living should equate to a high level of happiness because it suggest a person has a good quality of life. The use of GDP in tabulating SOL in a country is not an accurate indicator because it simply measures the economic level of a country. A high economic level does not necessary means that the population is experiencing high SOL.
ReplyDeleteHowever, every indicator has it's cons as well. GNH is not a very ideal idicator because the definition of 'happiness' is vague and every individual has different perceptions on happiness. A person rating himself '10' may be experiencing the same happiness as a person rating himself '9'. Because happiness is 'relative', it may be hard to ensure accuracy as well.
This question is bound to have many different answers because of the different ideas we have towards living standards. However, to follow what is widely accepted worldwide, living standards generally measure the level of income, health and education and basically, high living standards contribute to the ease by which people can satisfy their wants. When people can satisfy what they intend to have or experience then it will lead to a good quality of life.
ReplyDeleteIn this respect, I think National Gross Happiness (NGH) is not an appropriate measure of the living standards. Rather, NGH is a measure of the quality of life (QoL) of which standards of living is only one of the factors. Although satisfactory NGH result of a country suggests it having a high QoL, it does not necessarily mean that there are high living standards in the country because there are other factors that contribute to high QoL such as the social freedom, leisure time, environment and more importantly, our expectation of life. As seen from the video by BBC about Bhutan, the religious and social culture of Bhutan allow its people to be generally satisfied with their lives and we would expect them to score relatively high on NGH, though their standards of living may be much lower than those of developed countries.
The widely recognized way to measure living standards is indeed by using the Human Development Index (HDI) which measures income, education and health level extensively. Meanwhile, even though the high quality of life is likely to be the main goal of every country, living standards are still commonly by government to guide their policies. The complexities and subjective nature of level of the QoL means that it is only likely to be used by the government in the future when more researches about QoL have been done and QoL results can be clearly understood and applied.
GNH at surface level appears to be the better option, as it not only considers SOL in terms of economic growth, literacy rates and life expectancy but also considers the more personal factors that contribute to one's quality of life, such as social and psychological factors like fulfillment in life amongst many others. This edge that GNH has over GDP in measuring the general living standards of people is evident in fast-paced, developed countries like Japan and the USA. Although these countries enjoy relatively high SOLs judging by their high levels of GDP, there are a significant number of people residing in these countries that are unhappy with their lifestyles and may be emotionally dissatisfied due to hectic schedules that are characteristic of modern developed countries. As such, GDP may not always be a suitable and good indicator of the SOL in countries, as the emotional and social health of the people are not taken into account.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it should be noted that GNH is rather difficult to quantify and hence measure, and although it seeks to provide a more holistic representation of SOLs, it may not be easy to put into practice.
Well GNH measures happiness which is not measured by GNP and GDP. So logically speaking, the happier a country is, the standard of living should be higher. But i think that GNH is not a good indicator of SOL as it is very difficult to attach a value to that, thus with that a possible difficulty, it will make the measuring of SOL even harder. And whats more, GNH is a measure of the happiness level of everyone in the country and not every single person. Maybe the rich people are feeling satisfied and happy while the poor cries everyday whenever living necessity is a problem for them? We cannot possible know that so we have to make use of more realistic and informative indicators to measure SOL.
ReplyDeleteSo better indicators of SOl include HDI and MEW as they measure aspects of life which is essential in determining the SOL of a person like literacy rates.
While Bhutan may not have a very high GDP, its GNH however, indicates that its citizens are rather happy, in fact happier than a lot of developed countries. This raises the question: what exactly represents happiness? Since all the current available indicators are all developed to measure living standards, and indirectly happiness, why not just measure happiness itself? Hence I think that GNH is a good indicator of happiness. However, we must remember that happiness, being such a subjective emotion, is hard to measure and the exact numerical value of it is even harder to determine. Hence, while theoretically it is a good way to measure living standards, its reliability is highly doubted.
ReplyDeleteJu Lian
ReplyDeleteEveryone has their perception of happiness, some see it as having everything in the world, whiles others like the people of buthan see it as living a simple life without worries. GNH is a good measure of living standards in Buthan, as they do not see money as the esscence of happiness. This contrasts greatly from all the developed countries, where their people see money as a driving force to push them to work, and do almost anything to become richer. GNH will thus not be a good measure for living standards in developed countries as people are money driven and require money to lead a comfortable life, or they would lend up living on the streets. GDP per capita would be a more suitable measure of living standards in such countries as it indicates the amount of goods and services available per person and to a person living in a developed country, goods and services bring them happiness.
GNH is not neccesarily a good measure of a country's living standards. As we see from Bhutan's case, the pursuit for the people's happiness has resulted in the locals being less financially well-off as they could have been. We see in the photos that Bhutan appears to be more of a poor developing country. This could imply relatively poor sanitation and healthcare services available which will advertly affect the standard of living of the people. Furthermore, in the example of how the sole traffic light in Bhutan was replaced by the traditional method of having a person guilding the traffic at all times, we see that the pursuit of happiness has led to inefficiency as well. As such, happiness can be said to come at the expense of efficiency and wealth which may detrimental to the country in the long run. Lastly, the people's perceptions of happiness is constantly changing all the time. What may bring one happiness today may not bring him happiness tomorrow. As such, decisions and policies made based on the GNH today may not be effective later on. It may even bring about a dip in national happiness in the future.
ReplyDeleteAmanda
GNH is not necessarily a good measure of a country's standard of living, but it is indeed an inaccurate one. Happiness is difficult to quantify with numerical values, unless there are methods to break down different aspects of happiness specifically. Even so, the results obtained from rating levels of happiness in a survey for example are unreliable, and collecting such data can be rather tedious. As such, it is also impractical. As seen from the pictures taken in Bhutan, although it is implied that they have simpler and assumingly more carefree lives, technology development is very low in their country, even traffic lights are not installed on roads. This can affect their economic growth in the long run, since improving technologies are needed to expand production capacity and improve national income. However, GNH can be used as another measure of SOL in terms of an individual's quality of life, but just for developed countries such as USA and Japan. It can be used to support GDP in the measurement of SOL of a country. It is however noted that residents of developed countries tend to lead more stressful lives caused by work, and thus lowering their quality of life. Hence, GNH can also be used to support the fact that the SOL of developed countries may not be much relatively higher than that of developing ones. (Sandra)
ReplyDeleteI think GNH provides an alternative measurement of living standards to GDP and gives a more balanced measurement of SOL. GDP only accounts for the monetary aspect of SOL, such as consumption, investment, government spending in terms of the amount of financial wealth and thus welfare of people in financial terms. However GDP does not factor in other aspects of living standards such as the social happiness of people that are based on emotional, psychological and/or environmental terms that are difficult, if not impossible, to accurately gauge and measure using GDP only. Thus in comes GNH to consider these other factors as well, so that a more balanced and accurate measure of GDP can be obtained. However, each method alone is insufficient and inaccurate to a large extent, without being complimented by the other. Thus SOL should be measured by these two methods and then concluded based on the data and measurements gained from them, to accurately gauge a country's SOL.
ReplyDeleteBob
Xingchen said...
ReplyDeleteit is a innovative idea to use GNH as the main indicator of a country's well-being, but, i would say it is not a comprehensive way to measure the standard of living, especially for less developed countries like Bhutan. i think for these countries, the main target should be to boost their economic growth. this is because although happiness is important, the high living standard should still found on the financial power or purchasing power. for the case of Bhutan, people may have happy lives, but they absolutely don't live conveniently. this kind of lives cannot be deemed as high quality. thus, it is too extreme to focus too much on GNH. maybe for developed countries, the living standard there has reached certain height, it is better to pay more attention on the human well-beings eg. whether they live happily. this will further increase the quality of life of people in the developed countries.
therefore, in my opinion, GNH can be a good measure of standard of living in the developed countries but definitely not in the developing countries.
I think it is a very subjective way to use the gross national happiness. However, it is also a refreshing way. I think it marks our generations gradual acceptance that there are more important things than monetary gains, and that money does not simply equate to happiness.
ReplyDeleteI do feel that in order to be happy, a certain standard of living has to be met. I'm assuming that for a person to be happy, they will have to have all the basic necessities to survive (ie food water shelter) as well as a hope for a better future. Hence if all the basic necessities are met, then they can be happy, and their standard of living can be measured through the GNH. - sarah kate.