gross national happiness

• Gross National Happiness

gross national happiness (uncountable)

1. A particular indicator of a country's quality of life, developed in Bhutan in the 1970s.
   • 1998 December 21, Tim McGirk, “Mystery in the Hills”, in Time:

     King Jigme's goal, he says, is to increase the gross national happiness, and to that end he spends weeks traveling his Himalayan realm, in a Toyota Land Cruiser until the roads end and then on horseback or by foot, inquiring about what it would take to make people content.

   • 2005 March 15, Michael Johnson, “Meanwhile: Looking for happiness in all the wrong places”, in New York Times, retrieved 28 June 2011:

     Kannemann is working with three other U.S. universities to build a methodology that can be exported to other countries. Each country can then rank itself, as Britain will be doing, on a scale of gross national happiness.

   • 2011 May 24, Frank Jordans, “USA comes up a bit short in global Better Life Index”, in USA Today, retrieved 28 June 2011:

     The small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan introduced a policy of Gross National Happiness more than twenty years ago.