Can a country measure happiness and human development instead of output?

Yes, and two attempts show how. One is the Human Development Index, which ranks countries on health, schooling and income instead of on output alone. The other is Gross National Happiness, a philosophy of the government of Bhutan that goes further and includes an index for measuring a population's collective happiness and well-being.

The Human Development Index, or HDI, is a composite of life expectancy, education and per capita income indicators, used to rank countries into four tiers of human development. The Pakistani economist Mahbub ul-Haq launched the Human Development Reports in 1990 to shift the focus from national income accounting to people-centred policies. He believed a simple composite measure was needed to convince the public, academics and politicians that development should be judged by well-being as well as by economic advances.

Bhutan's idea is older. In 1972 the 4th King, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, declared "Gross National Happiness" more important than Gross Domestic Product. It implies that sustainable development should take a holistic approach and give equal importance to non-economic aspects of wellbeing. The Gross National Happiness Index was instituted as the goal of the government in the constitution of 2008, and in 2011 the UN General Assembly urged member nations to follow Bhutan's example and measure happiness and well-being.

Neither is a perfect scoreboard. The HDI leaves out factors such as net wealth per capita, critics have described GNH as a propaganda tool used to distract from human rights abuses, and others see it as a process of learning rather than a fixed end point. Both exist because GDP alone does not say how people are doing.