Speaking at the High Level Meeting on 'Happiness and Well-Being: Defining a New Economic Paradigm' convened during the sixty-sixth session of the General Assembly, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stated that the world 'needs a new economic paradigm that recognizes the parity between the three pillars of sustainable development. Social, economic and environmental well-being are indivisible. Together they define gross global happiness.
The meeting was convened at an initiative of Bhutan, a country which recognized the supremacy of national happiness over national income since the early 1970s and famously adopted the goal of Gross National Happiness over Gross National Product.