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Bhutan, after prioritizing happiness, now faces an existential crisis

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271 points nradov | 1 comments | 18 Nov 24 13:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.208s | source
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jdietrich ◴[18 Nov 24 15:21 UTC] No.42173139[source]▶
Bhutan's economy is growing, but it still has a nominal GDP per capita of only $3,700. Their youth unemployment rate is 16%, but 24% in urban areas. For all the talk of gross national happiness, it's hard to imagine a young person feeling happy in a poor country with very limited opportunities for upward mobility.

I'm also not sure that mass emigration should be seen as an existential threat. Many developing economies have very successfully leveraged emigration and remittances as an engine of economic growth. If Bhutan can modernise into a more open economy, those young people could start returning home with the skills, experience and capital to do great things.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

https://www.nsb.gov.bt/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2023/1...

https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2024/03/11/a-stron...

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1. tim333 ◴[18 Nov 24 15:38 UTC] No.42173366[source]▶
I imagine the low wages there are a big reason why young people leave. I was there in 2011 doing the tourist thing and you could live nicely on not much money as they didn't have much the way of a land shortage or silly building restrictions so you could build quite a nice house for not much - the style there is log cabin like. But it must be tempting to go off and earn 10x for a while and then come back.