{"id":67561,"date":"2024-10-30T13:45:44","date_gmt":"2024-10-30T04:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2024\/oct\/30\/bhutan-what-happened-to-the-kingdom-of-happiness"},"modified":"2024-10-30T13:45:44","modified_gmt":"2024-10-30T04:45:44","slug":"what-happened-to-bhutans-kingdom-of-happiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=67561","title":{"rendered":"What happened to Bhutan\u2019s \u2018kingdom of happiness\u2019?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Himalayan country is facing unprecedented emigration and high youth unemployment, casting doubt on its famous happiness-based economic approach<\/p>\n<p>Bhutan is a tiny country of mountains and clouds nestled between giants: it shares borders with China and India. Known as \u201cthe kingdom of happiness\u201d because of its focus on measuring <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sustainable-business\/bhutan-prime-minister-business-gross-national-happiness\">gross national happiness (GNH)<\/a>, its approach to development is based on the Buddhist idea of the \u201cmiddle way\u201d, or the pursuit of balance, rather than extremes. But lately, the balance has been off.<\/p>\n<p>GNH, first measured by Bhutan in 2008, is calculated using surveys of 148 questions, conducted in person every few years. The most recent survey from 2022 sampled 1.4% of the population and gave the country an average happiness score of 0.781 out of one, a score that defines the Bhutanese as precisely 3.3% happier than they were in 2015.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2024\/oct\/30\/bhutan-what-happened-to-the-kingdom-of-happiness\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Himalayan country is facing unprecedented emigration and high youth unemployment, casting doubt on its famous happiness-based economic approachBhutan is a tiny country of mountains and clouds nestled between giants: it shares borders with China and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1081,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1786,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bhutan","category-south-and-central-asia"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1081"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67562,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67561\/revisions\/67562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}