GNH – HIS MAJESTY’S FOOTPRINTS IN JAPAN
Japan’s state minister of national strategy, economic and fiscal policy, Motohisa Furukawa on Monday announced that the Japanese government will launch a survey on the people’s Gross National Happiness (GNH).
A Taiwanese paper, The United Daily News quoted the minister saying that Japan will “no longer design its economic policy based solely on achieving high Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
According to the paper, the decision comes in the wake of His Majesty’s visit to Japan, which brought “cultural shock” to Japan.
Meanwhile, the China Times reported that the new GNH index adopted by the Japanese government will assess “how Japanese are feeling in their mind about their present living conditions.” The Japanese GNH index covers three major indicators: economic and social conditions, physical and mental health, and family and social connections — all of which can be measured in concrete terms by a person’s satisfaction at work, sense of poverty or riches, average lifespan and paid holidays and so on.
These three major areas will be divided into 11 categories and 130 indicators for a total measurement of one’s sense of happiness.
Under economic and social conditions are such items as satisfaction at work, child poverty, maternal and childcare leave. “Uneasiness about radioactivity leaks” is also covered in this area.
Physical and mental health will measure lifespan and mortality rate of pregnant women.
Family and social connections takes into account frequency of contact with family members and friends, length of time of staying at home without going out to visit others, paid holidays and “taking it for granted to give aid to all those who need it.”
In Taiwan, Vice Chairman Hu Chung-ying of the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) said its a world trend not to take economic indicators alone as the sole standard for national development.
The CEPD has taken reference from the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) to build a Taiwanese version of “Your Better Life Index” which showed that Taiwan ranked among the bottom ten of OECD countries in almost half of the index items.
The Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) noted that Taiwan ranked high in terms of education and research, income and income distribution, but performed poorly when it came to family and health. For instance, the total birth rate was so low — lower than any of the OECD countries — that it ranked low in “the average annual increase of population.”
Hu said OECD’s “Your Better Life Index” and Japan’s GNH (adopted from Bhutan) are a firm global trend that Taiwan will have to accept sooner or later to “make ice-cold economic figures meaningful.”
In addition to the Bhutanese index, France is in the midst of designing its own measurement system and OECD has its own, indicating that it is a global trend to use non-GDP yards to evaluate people’s living conditions
Source: bhutantoday