We have heard from MP Khaw in his untactical attempt to show his point about the worldwide misconception of Bhutan as one of the happiest country in the world (despite being ranked so by Business Week). According to UN's HDI study that is "much more empirical than the GNH Index you will find in Bhutan, which is quite subjective", Singapore is ranked 26th. Still, we are ranked 4th in Asia behind Japan, Korea and Hong Kong despite being the country with the highest PPP in Asia according to IMF.
Norway, ranked top in HDI also has the top 5 largest GDP per capita (thanks to its offshore reserves). Joining Norway in the top 20 countries in the HDI ranking are its Scandinavian sisters Sweden and Denmark (Finland coming in at 22). None of these countries are blessed with great hoards of oil and gas. They are all borderline socialist states, with generous welfare benefits and lots of redistribution of wealth. Yet they don't let that socialism cross the line into autocracy (see The World's Happiest Countries). According to the Failed State Index, they have one of the most sustainable governance model in the world (uses 12 factors to determine the rating for each nation including security threats, economic implosion, human rights violations and refugee flows).
Coming down to key areas of the incumbent concern, which led to great displeasures in the last few years (i.e. the immigration policy adopted by the government as a strategy to prevent the extinction of the population), Norway has one of the highest fertility rates in Europe (1.96 in 2010). Other Scandinavian countries also have higher fertility rates as compared to the rest of Europe. Sweden is one of the very few developed countries experiencing an upward movement in fertility rate in the last couple of years. Studies have been made about Sweden's generous parental leave, (see Parental Leave): all working parents are entitled to 16 months paid leave per child, the cost being shared between employer and the state. To encourage greater paternal involvement in child-rearing, a minimum of 2 months out of the 16 is required to be used by the "minority" parent, in practice usually the father, and some Swedish political parties on the political left argue for legislation to oblige families to divide the 16 months equally between both parents. In Norway a total of 46 weeks is provided: the mother must take at least 3 weeks immediately before birth and 6 weeks immediately after birth, father must take at least 12 weeks (the so-called "daddy quota") - the rest can be shared between mother and father. The introduction of paternal leave, besides the most apparent, also ensure gender equality and equal opportunity for femals and males in the workplace. To provide a fair picutre, I am also providing statistics about migrant population in the Scandinavia: According to Eurostat, in 2010, there were 1.33 million foreign-born residents in Sweden, corresponding to 14.3% of the total population (12.2% in 2011 for Norway and less than 10% in Denmark).
The Scandinavian countries are in many comparative studies ranked on top when it comes to social capital (Rothstein, 2002), organizational participation (Dekker & van den Broek, 1998), and civil society’s vitality (Salamon et al., 2004). Scandinavian democracy is much talked about around the world, warning against the social engineering of people’s lives and pusking for the occasional close cooperation between state and civil society.
The Scandinavians say it all: A country with happy people (that is measured empirically), a thriving economy, good social and welfare benefits and a democractic and participative civil society with freedom of speech and expression is possible. I am not sure if I have missed out anything that is glaringly failing in the Scandinavian system because I hardly (never) hear any political parties making the comparison. Maybe we are too busy being good examples.
Side note: It is not exactly unpredictable for the incumbent to dwell on the poverty and the state of development of Bhutan to highlight the implausibility of the GNH. So I say better chance next time, WP.
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