Greed gives way to a re-evaluation of what is necessary in life, and, ultimately, what makes us happy.


By CATHERINE RAMPELL


THE ECONOMIC DOWNTURN is forcing a return to a culture of thrift that many economists say could last well beyond the inevitable recovery.

This is not because Americans have suddenly become more financially virtuous or have learned the error of their freespending ways. Instead, these experts say, Americans may have no choice but to continue saving.

This shift back to thrift may seem to be a healthy change for a consumer class known for spending more than it earns, but there is a downside: American businesses have become so dependent on consumer spending that any pullback sends ripples through the economy.

Add the decline in consumer spending to the planned expiration of government stimulus spending, and a painful readjustment in demand for goods and services could occur, economists say. The effect would be felt in America and all over the world, as many developing economies also depend on America’s big-spending ways.

Fearful of job losses and anxious over housing and stock declines, Americans are saving more of their paychecks than they were before the recession. In the last year, the savings rate - the percentage of after-tax income that people do not spend - has risen to above 4 percent, from virtually zero.

This happens in nearly every recession, and the effect is usually fleeting. Once the economy recovers, Americans revert to more spending and less saving. Over the last 30 years, the savings rate has fluctuated from over 14 percent in experiment within an experiment, accepting the resignation of the popular king as an absolute monarch and holding the country’s first democratic election a year ago.

The change is part of attaining gross national happiness, Mr. Dorji said.“They resonate well, democracy and G.N.H. Both place responsibility on the individual. Happiness is an individual pursuit and democracy is the empowerment of the individual.”

It was a rare case of a monarch’s unilaterally stepping back from power.

If the world is to take gross national happiness seriously, the Bhutanese concede, they must work out a scheme of definitions and standards that can be quantified and measured by the big players of the world’s economy.

“Once Bhutan said,‘O.K., here we are with G.N.H.,’the developed world and the World Bank and the I.M.F. and so on asked,‘How do you measure it?’”Mr. Dorji said. So the Bhutanese produced an intricate model of well-being that features the four pillars, the nine domains and the 72 indicators of happiness.

Specifically, the government has determined that the four pillars of a happy society involve the economy, culture, the environment and good governance.

It breaks these into nine domains: psychological well-being, ecology, health, education, culture, living standards, time use, community vitality and good governance, each with its own weighted and unweighted G.N.H. index.

All of this is to be analyzed using the 72 indicators. Under the domain of psychological well-being, for example, indicators include the frequencies of prayer and meditation and of feelings of selfishness, jealousy, calm, compassion, generosity and frustration as well as suicidal thoughts.

“We are even breaking down the time of day: how much time a person spends with family, at work and so on,”Mr. Dorji said. Mathematical formulas have even been devised to reduce happiness to its tiniest component parts.

Every two years, these indicators are to be reassessed through a nationwide questionnaire, said Karma Tshiteem, secretary of the Gross National Happiness Commission, as he sat in his office at the end of a hard day of work that he said made him happy.

Bhutan is pitting its four pillars, nine domains and 72 indicators against the 48 channels of Hollywood and Bollywood that have invaded since television was permitted a decade ago.

“Before June 1999 if you asked any young person who is your hero, the inevitable response was,‘The king,’”Mr. Dorji said. “Immediately after that it was David Beckham, and now it’s 50 Cent, the rap artist. Parents are helpless.”

So if G.N.H. may hold the secret of happiness for people suffering from the collapse of financial institutions abroad, it offers something more urgent here in this pristine culture.

“Bhutan’s story today is, in one word, survival,”Mr. Dorji said. “Gross national happiness is survival; how to counter a threat to survival.”





The government in Bhutan created a mathematical model to help guide happiness Children played during a festival.