ABSTRACT
One of the puzzles of modern economics is that despite the genuine increase in the wealth of the developed nations there has not been an equivalent increase in the happiness of people populating the developed nations (Diener, 2003). One interpretation has been that although physical capital has increased, there has been a concomitant decline in social capital; that is, the social support and social networks with which we all enrich our lives. Although the reasons for the decline in social capital are likely to be complex (Layard, 2005), to take one simple example the impact of television over the past 50 years has been considerable. A very dramatic study of television’s impact has taken place in the Kingdom of Bhutan, located to the east of Tibet in the Himalayas. The Kingdom of Bhutan has taken a unique approach to the state of its population in that it has introduced an economic population measure known as Gross National Happiness (GNH), which sits alongside other economies’ preoccupation with Gross National Product (GNP). Since television was introduced into Bhutan in 1998, there has been a dramatic decline in social capital, or Gross National Happiness, to the extent that the Bhutanese government is likely to cut down the number of TV channels and the amount of TV coverage that will be available in the future (MacDonald, 2003).
