The assessment of gross national happiness (GNH; Wylie: rgyal-yongs dga'a-skyid dpal-'dzoms) was designed in an attempt to define an indicator that measures quality of life or social progress in more holistic and psychological terms than only the economic indicator of gross domestic product (GDP).
Read more about Gross National Happiness: Origins and Meaning, Qualitative and Quantitative Indicators, Conferences, External Studies, Criticism
Famous quotes containing the words gross, national and/or happiness:
“I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous ... as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both north and south. It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Our national experience in Americanizing millions of Europeans whose chief wish was to become Americans has been a heady wine which has made us believe, as perhaps no nation before us has ever believed, that, given the slimmest chance, all peoples will pattern themselves upon our model.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“... the happiness of a people is the only rational object of government, and the only object for which a people, free to choose, can have a government at all.”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)