Broad measures of economic progress

[needs update] The Gross National Happiness (GNH) phrase was initially used as an off-hand remark by the King of Bhutan to indicate his lack of interest in western materialistic style of economic development.

[citation needed] The implementation of the GNH philosophy was meant to prohibit TV and Jeans from becoming part of the culture of the Bhutanese population.

The main difference was the addition of spiritual elements such as Karma and prayers indicators to fit the local Bhutanese culture.

The Bhutan GNH philosophy was initially dismissed due to its generality and was considered as touchy-feely concept, but later taken seriously after it published an econometric framework.

Some of the most significant actions taken include: In addition, the European Commission provides a list of different indicators that can be categorised into five categories : In 2010, the Measuring National Well-being programme was launched in the UK.

Following a national debate in 2011 asking “what matters” to the general public, the programme has published a series of releases on experimental methodology such as the value of the non-market production of households collected in the Household Satellite Accounts and ad-hoc analysis like the Commuting and Personal Well-being release.

The programme will continue developing and improving the measurement of the well-being of the citizens in the United Kingdom in order to report on the findings to inform both public debate and policy-making.

Numerous other measures have been suggested to supplement, not simply replace GDP, creating a "dashboard" of metrics to track the economy and well-being.