Countless metrics have been proposed over time to track wellbeing of some type. The recent WISE initiative [1] tries to put some structure around this (using current welfare, future welfare and inclusiveness as key dimensions).
Despite this lack of sharpness and unassailable objectivity, the signal sent by all these metrics is generally real: the focus on aggregate economic performance (the infamous GDP) and organizing society entirely around the maximization of monetarily defined wealth is too simplistic, no longer fit-for-purpose (if it ever was) and potentially a complete cul-de-sac.
The list of "happy" countries is more or less the set where various intangible cultural aspects partially mitigate the growing inadequacy of the mainstream socioeconomic apparatus. But it is not a blueprint that can be easily adopted or improved upon by other countries and cultures.
Yet there are no visible paths to workable alternatives (or complements) to the existing system. The simplicity of mapping everything onto a single monetary dimension has been such a successful monopoly and created incredibly strongly entrenched interests. It has left effectively no room for evolving any other broad-based economic infrastructure or tools that might expand what we optimize for to things that evidently matter.
People are frustrated and compile this or that index or meta-index but the expression "put money where your mouth is" neatly expresses the current impasse. Happy happiness day! [2]
Whatever metrics anyone comes up with today, cannot be scaled back historically.
If e.g. you put some metric around "do you have a car", and try to use that metric towards "happiness", this implicitly puts all the people in 19th century in the "unhappy by not having a car" category.
The only thing that can be used over time is the self-reported level of happiness. I.e. "on a scale of 1 to 5, how happy do you feel today?". And this is exactly what this study does.
The real issue is that GDP (a concept which is too complicated to be understood by general populace), or any other "economic performance" criterion, have little to no relation to the self-perceived happiness of the population. Objectively poor people can be happy, and objectively rich people can be unhappy.
This is a democratic worry: unhappy people are pliable people and are more likely to vote for demagogues, demagogues who are more a wrecking ball than a manager of state.
Hopefully we get good and hard the democracy that we have long been promised; and good and hard because you only get an outcome that people whose lives have been utterly and entirely unlike your own are the ones making the rules for how you and yours will be to the end of your days. Sounds like a lot of fun right? It sure is interesting how people's opinions change when they realize what kind of people are the ones getting to make the rules for everybody from here on out.
The concern is not that people want change or that they vote for change per se but that the change comes in the form of a person or persons who destroy the freedom to vote for change. This is more likely to happen during times of discontent.
Falling happiness ought to be a concern for any political system that seeks to enhance the society.
You say that as a bad thing, others see it as a good thing. Like with everything, we eventually revert to a happy and "flowing" medium. People being unhappy means their needs and worries were not being catered.
Alternative explanation would be quite different: once people have their needs and worries taken care of, they immediately think of new needs. These new needs are (naturally) not being catered (yet), so people feel unhappy. Once these are catered, new ones are created.
If my neighbours have a car but I don't, I'm unhappy. If I get a car, I'm unhappy since my neighbours have an SUV. Once I get an SUV, I'm unhappy since they have one with climate control, power windows, roof window, and navigation. Rinse, repeat.
This explanation talks more about what we humans are as a species, and less about government etc.
Your word choice of "catered" in reference to meeting the needs of people is interesting. Do you feel that suffering is part of being a citizen?
Needs are not something to be "catered" to, but met with reasonable effort, and the US, so far as I can tell, is failing on that front, and has been for decades, regardless of red or blue leadership.
Nobody is asking for handouts, just the ability to afford a home and groceries with an appropriate wage. Sorry to be pedantic, and I certainly agree with your sentiment, but we need to watch our language in this discussion since I firmly believe that is part of why the subject matter is so divisive.
I re-read my post just now, and I may have worded it funny with the use of the word "catered", but I did mean it in a blanket sense as it applies to needs and worries.
So for their needs, they're not being met with reasonable effort. I'd even argue that some needs are not even being considered.
Likewise, for their worries, they're not being taken into consideration. E.g. If people are worried about immigration, address it. Or if people are worried about student debt, also do something. But don't let politicians ignore it entirely while talking incessantly that it needs to be fixed.
This is why I'm a huge proponent of direct-democracy, or any sort of more directed form of democracy other than representative. People recently have been correctly realizing that "democracy" is not as noble or actually as representative as they've been told since birth.
Side note, I think government/politicians/TPTB/etc are using "Democracy" as a way to have their cake and eat it. It's very difficult for peoples needs/worries to be address in government, they're always somehow mediated or ignored with the common excuse being party-lines, lack of bipartisan support, or just "hey it's those evil guys over there". But at the same time, we're told that it's "okay" because don't worry, this is democracy and it's just the will of the people.
I call BS. If it's the will of the people, we'd be 100% okay with doing referendums left right and centre on every contentious issue tomorrow.
/rant. Sorry that turned into a bit of a tangential rant.
Finnish public discussion is often very critical of Finland. People keep comparing Finland to other countries and complaining how some specific thing is worse than in country X. That's probably a key reason Finland ranks so high here.
Happiness, when measured at population level, doesn't mean intense emotions. It doesn't mean that everyone is visibly happy. It means that people are generally content with their lives, because nothing is particularly wrong for most people.
If you look at the country rankings, all the usual suspects rank high: the Nordic countries, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. Whenever you rank countries by some measure of success or quality of life, you expect to see those countries near the top. All of them are wealthy and not too large, and they all have a culture where the people in charge generally try to make things right. It doesn't always look like that from the inside, but when you compare them to the rest of the world, it's pretty clear why they are so successful. Especially if you try to measure success by the quality of life experienced by the middle 80% of the population.
> A far right government with an xenophobic, anti-EU, "we need a strong leader" party being the second strongest
Other things on the list I can understand but not this one. The government is not "far right" and not "xenophobic" (although one of the party in the government might be labeled as such, persus). Compared to US for example I think the current government is much more on the left than either republicans or democrats. The leading party in finland (part of the government) is actively pushing for more work-based migration.
Where did you get the "we need a strong leader" rethoric that you mention? I have never seen that from Persus (the party you are refering to)
The government has generally been described as the most right in modern history in Finland. That is a mixture of "taking from the poor, giving to the rich" and a xenophobic agenda. That not all parties support the xenophobic line does not change the fact that such goals have been written into the agenda and laws are likely to be passed. Not fully as extreme as one party would like, but still.
Of course left - right is only one dimension in politics. Nowadays typically another dimension is conservative - liberal, but even 2 dimensions cannot measure everything. So the government could probably be described as the most economic right and the least liberal, I simplified that a bit to far right.
That party has no such strong leader agenda, but to my understanding polls show a clear correlation between "everything was better under Kekkonen" (a president for over 25 years with a somewhat authoritarian leader style) and voting for the "True Finns" / "Finns Party" today.
Either way this government is too young to have a major impact on the study in TFA. My point was more like the other way round: Happy people would not vote for the party of the dissatisfied, simple answers, everything was better before EU/the foreigners came. For those following German politics, "Wutbürger" (angry citizens) would typically not be happy people, would they?
> government has generally been described as the most right in modern history in Finland
Which is probably much more on the left than any US government for example and quite far from the "far right" you were stating in previous post.
> "taking from the poor, giving to the rich" and a xenophobic agenda
Quite strong words. This sounds very much like your personal opinion instead of a fact.
> to my understanding polls show a clear correlation between "everything was better under Kekkonen" (a president for over 25 years with a somewhat authoritarian leader style) and voting for the "True Finns" / "Finns Party" today
Sources please for the "clear correlation". This also sounds very much like your personal opinion.
> My point was more like the other way round: Happy people would not vote for the party of the dissatisfied, simple answers, everything was better before EU/the foreigners came. For those following German politics, "Wutbürger" (angry citizens) would typically not be happy people, would they?
Voting parties more on the right does not mean that "people are not happy", it mostly means that people understand economic principles.
The previous leftist government caused the Finland's debt level to raise to very dangerous levels while the economy shrinked at the same time and were only going to add more debt without cutting any expenses or encouraging new business. I personally think that business-positive government is a very good thing and apparently so do most of the happy finnish voters.
>> "taking from the poor, giving to the rich" and a xenophobic agenda
>
> Quite strong words. This sounds very much like your personal opinion instead of a fact.
Yes, strong words. In my opinion it's the worst government as long as I have followed Finnish politics. A vice prime minister who wants to shoot foreigners, that would not be acceptable in many Western democracies. (Yes, the statement is old and she might have written it only to get political supporters. But for me neither of them is an excuse.)
Just read any newspaper:
* Next month social benefits will be cut and more cuts are in preparation
* Unemployed foreigners will lose their permits and have to leave their country after a short time. Not yet decided, but the original plan was 3 months.
* The possibility for seeking political asylum can be suspended for 30 days (draft by the ministry)
That's what I call taking from the poor and the weak.
Despite that everybody agrees that the public debt is growing too fast, the government insists on lowering taxes (not drastically, but still) instead of raising them as the situation would require.
That's what I call giving to the rich.
The new government is growing the debt even further already according to current budget. And typically the budget is too optimistic, in reality it might come worse. I would not call that understanding economic principles, it's pure ideology that taxes must not be raised and benefits of the rich must not be touched.
> apparently so do most of the happy finnish voters.
The results were pretty unclear. Several government coalitions would have been possible. The winner did not want to compromise, but move to the right as far as they could.
If there were a election today, the Finns Party would lose quite a bit. Many of their voters are affected by the cuts and not happy.
So claiming that this government has a strong backing is a bit of an exaggeration. It does not help that they repeat it. They won the last election, but that's it.
Because none of the items you mentioned affect happiness or the perceived life of the people in Finland. The vast majority won't and don't know people who commit suicide, murder or die from drugs. People may grumble about bus strikes but are mostly are happy with and trust public services, transport, police, press and government. And feel safe they won't be destitute even if lose their job.
BTW Finland doesn't have a far right government - there's a right wing party (which has shelved its anti-eu policies) as part of the government coalition. The proportional representation perhaps makes people feel less disenfranchised and 'happier'.
> The vast majority won't and don't know people who commit suicide,
That part I seriously doubt. I personally know of 2 suicides in the last 20 years. Not people that were close in any way, but people I had met. (Like the brother of the best friend of my wife or a classmate of my daughter.) One more accident where suicide is suspected to be the real reason by many. There are probably not many Finns with no relative who died from the consequences of alcoholism.
I would claim everybody should know someone suffering/having suffered from depression or other mental health problems.
And I have witnessed one suicide, which was not a pleasant view (that might be more of bad luck, probably fewer people have)
> There are probably not many Finns with no relative who died from the consequences of alcoholism.
Suicide is 1 per 7500 people - so I still think most people won't really know someone, but might know of, or have met.
But yes, if suicide included people who "drank themselves to death" or who had fatal accidents when drunk, or killed someone while drunk, close to everyone (including me) would know someone
How does Israel and Kuwait rank so high ? Did they surveyed the arab israelis and Palestinians? What about those slave workers in Kuwait ? In both case that's more than half the total population that lives in horrible conditions.
All these studies are self-reported happiness (basically, many people answering the question "How happy do you feel today?"). Israel ranks high because large parts of the population — the religious ones, with not a lot of income but many children and a strong sense of fulfillment — are regularly and steadily self-reporting high levels of happiness.
(This relates to both Jewish and Muslim citizens of Israel.)
Your (or mine, or anyone's) view of their conditions don't have much influence on their everyday feelings.
> Makes this whole Ranking suspicious
There's nothing too suspicious about asking many people in different countries are they feeling happy on this particular day. If anything, what's looking suspicious is the premise that high levels of GDP (for whatever that means) would result in more happiness of the people.
- Israelis have a well-known reality-distortion field as regards their well being.
- The Palestinian population, de facto subjects of the Israeli state, are most probably not included.
Bhutan is the self-proclaimed “Happiest Country in the World”, going so far as to “measure” Gross Domestic Happiness and claim it’s more important to their government than GDP.
I can confirm that us Brits do like to have a good old whinge ;) A national trait that's for sure. Personally, I don't notice people whinging quite as much as they did as when I was younger, I feel possibly we've absorbed a bit of the American positive thinking mentality. But certainly wonder how this shows itself on surveys. Its quite possible that Brits when asked in a survey, say their life is "s**" then having had the fantastic privilege that day, of whinge-ing in a survey as well as to anyone around them who fancies listening, they go on their merry way, quite cheerful for having told someone extra how terrible everything is. ;)
But its not all about economic pressure, right? Poor countries with high sense of community and looking out for one another, are often happy. As for the UK, I heard the stats suggest older people are happy while younger people and teenagers in particular are not. My personal belief, as a Brit, is while social media probably doesn't help, a big reason for unhappy teenagers is that secondary schools have been effectively privatised. They're run by "Academy chains" - essentially big business , which pushes teenagers very hard to have high attendance rate , come to school when ill, push them to do well on exams. Not actually learn useful things, but learn how to game the system to get the high scores. Its very corporate, and ultimately about maintaining the image of the corporation not the well-being of teenagers. One can dispute this, and say other stuff is upsetting teenagers e:g news about wars and climate breakdown, but "twas ever thus" e:g my Mum was preparing for O-level exams (yesterday's GCSEs) during Cuban Missile crisis. People point at economic issues but that's very inconsistent - there are some teenagers in poverty, some rich, some in the middle, we're a divided society that's for sure.
That's the "Life Evaluation" list, there are other criteria as well if you look at the full report...
Large differences between age groups as well, as the report states:
> Norway, Sweden, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Spain are countries where the old are now significantly happier than the young, while Portugal and
Greece show the reverse pattern.
Driven especially by having the second most happiest youth. For one, Israel is an advanced country with mostly sunny weather. But the edge in my opinion is military/service culture produces a sense of self-actualization in the youth that is lacking in much of the West. Religion also makes people happy, and Israel is a pretty religious country.
Religion also gives people a somewhat higher than average chance of being murdered by people of a different religion. At least, that's how it seems to be in Israel / Palestine and actually that whole area.
I guess some people around there die happy, believing it is for a good cause, so there's no contradiction, at least not from their point of view.
There's no point being made about what is a "good thing" or a "bad thing", since that depends on the values of the people making the judgment. The point being made here is that having a lot of (religious, family, community) obligations fills one's life with a certain sense of worth, importance, meaning, and fulfillment — and makes them self-report as being happy, when asked by researchers. No judgments about what's good or bad.
Well, if it makes me self-report as happy, and makes me live longer (on average), I hardly think it is useful to say "no judgement on what's good or bad". If living long while being happy is not good, I don't know what is.
I am very surprised though that people in what is nearly a perpetual war, being attacked or hated from all sides, are both subjectively happier and objectively longer living than most of the rest of the planet.
Either I have really no clue what happiness is, or we are wrong about the idea that war is bad, at least not in all cases.
Correlation does not imply causation. Moreover, the general trend does not promise a personal trend.
There's correlation between being in relationship and reporting happiness. This can be taken as a proof that being in a relationship makes people happy ("marriage brings happiness" hypothesis). An alternative explanation does a U-turn on this one: people who are "naturally happy" are always smiling, take life easy, and basically make for a better partner. They are easier to marry, and easier to stay with once married. This is "happiness brings marriage" hypothesis. The third explanation would be that these are occurring simultaneously but are not in any causal relationship whatsoever.
Moreover, even people in Finland are more happy on average, this doesn't promise that you would be happier if you move to Finland. Rather, being in a new country with no knowledge of the language and no friends might make you less happy than you are now.
In other words, you shouldn't take this study in any particular direction of "if you want to be happy you should marry someone", nor "you should move to Finland", nor "you should join a religion."
There's a difference between "Do you believe in [some sort or form of] God?" and "Do you regularly spend a significant part of your day doing what your God expects from you?"
To put that into perspective, imagine a Christian country with 40% of non-believers and 60% of monks (with the monks consistently reporting high levels of happiness). That would strongly remind of Israel. (To be clear, both Jewish and Muslim population is included in the latter.)
Nope, you have a misconception of the country. Source: am Israeli atheist.
Majority is secular. Of the religious people the majority are relatively tame. There are some extremist religious people e.g. Hasidim but they are a cult of their own (think Amish). They probably wouldn't even take part in a survey.
The reason for happiness is multi-fold:
* It's a 3 year average. Notice that Israel is actually slipping due to last year.
* Economy was generally good until last October
* Army service tends to unify the community
* It's a small country which tends to bring people together through collective fate
I'm not saying that the religious people aren't happier than the median. But I am saying that based on statistics Israel is relatively secular. More so than most western countries.
You’ll be able to enjoy the YouTube lecture by prof. Yuval Harari (as originally recorded) where he addresses the issues of happiness, measuring happiness, and how and why Israeli society ranks so high.
Not a big fan of his. I think he over simplifies some ideas for mass consumption.
Regardless, this is a self reporting study which is the only way to report happiness. Over the past 3 years prior to October Israel had years of peace which are far more appreciated in a country that has known quite a lot of conflict. I think westerners don't appreciate this as much as we do.
You don't have to be his fan to hear his explanations about the studies and their methodology, it could be very helpful if one wants to understand what makes people report that they are happy.
As the people return from the army feeling they have done something significant to protect their country, and with the public discourse drifting away from the regular "Bibi vs. not Bibi" agenda, I fully expect Israel to report even higher levels of happiness next year.
The opposite is happening. There was a decline as it was #3 in last years survey. The army is a unifying force that contributes to happiness after it's over. Not during and not during war. Lots of people died and pretty much everyone knows people who died. I expect the decline to last a few years.
80% are pretty much interested in Bibi taking a hike by now. The only people who still want him have a deep agenda and never liked him to begin with. He's outlived his usefulness even for them.
I disagree as an American who moved here. Many things are closed on Shabbat, including public transport! Nobody is driving on Yom Kippur. There is nothing like that in the world. Also that what in the diaspora we consider religious holidays are national holidays here. Israelis are used to all this and consider it part of their national culture, so maybe religious is not the best word. The Jewish identity has a big national component. Hilonim might not define themselves as religious still possess a profound Jewish identity which can come off as a religious identity to an outside observer.
Public transport is closed due to the minority religious pressure. But there are still traffic jams due to the fact that non-religious people still go out. You can buy pork and shrimps everywhere.
As a non religious person I love Yom Kippur. It's super fun. We all go out with bikes and have a blast. We respect the religious people and don't drive (also it's dangerous with all the kids out on bikes). It doesn't mean we're religious.
I accept that most feel they have a Jewish identity. But that isn't religion, it's tradition.
This has been researched, the ultra-religious population (with the traditional clothing, very large amount of children, not much of an income) are regularly reporting high levels of happiness.
They did actually drop a pretty significant 0.9 points in the latest poll, but since the list is using three year averages that only caused a 0.3 drop for 2023.
As a Brit who lived in the US a few years so maybe has a detached perspective.. I saw Americans being happy in a land of opportunity with high personal freedom, opportunity to reinvent yourself, the great outdoors etc, and certainly I enjoyed that too. OTOH, individualism has its dark side. When people believe its all about self-determination and the state shouldn't be helping people, some people fall massively through the cracks e:g someone on low income while they try to look after a disabled family member. Americans are often generous at helping each other, in fact ironically I found those that supported economically right-wing "everyone should pull themselves up by their bootstraps" ideology, could often be simultaneously generous to others that they perceived to be in need. I think a source of unhappiness in the USA might be loneliness. To be honest, reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little house on the prairie" series, while that sounds idyllic in a way, it also sounds lonely and hard work to me. So, some sources of lower happiness in the USA in terms of lack of community, might be deep-rooted? (some off the top of my head thoughts which others may dispute :). )
But has it actually got worse? ;) I mean, yes in recent times, according to the methodology used by these academics, specifically relative to other countries. But that's pretty specific. As others said, maybe other countries have improved relatively? What's the take-away form all this? To me, loneliness is the biggest issue. We can all deal with a lot of cr*p in our lives if we've got supportive friends, and we can all be much happier by helping others who need it . Its very satisfying.
There are several front-page stories about youth happiness on the guardian today.
This struck me:
"""
It was the hush that worried the US’s top doctor as he toured the country’s university campuses last year.
Dr Vivek Murthy went to places including Duke, University of Texas and Arizona State, but so many youngsters were plugged into earphones and gazing into laptops and phones that it was incredibly quiet in the communal areas. Where was the loud chatter Murthy remembered from his college days?
I'm not saying that I disagree, but this strikes me as a "Things are different from my youth and are therefore bad" style comment (on behalf of the article author, not the commentator).
Well, there's two parts to that. Things are different, which I think is fair, and people are talking to each other less, which I guess is subjective but feels bad to me. I'm glad I went to college before smartphones existed, and Facebook really was just a place to put dumb photos from parties and poke each other.
Until November of this year, at which time Trump's forthcoming inauguration will retroactively be deemed the cause of why the US dipped in the happiness ranking earlier in the year
Between the homeless camps, the thousand yard stare retail workers, the perpetually angry boomer ruling class, the isolating physical environments, the destruction of third spaces, the medical bankruptcies, the lack of any kind of sick leave or vacation, the death race daily commutes, i thought this was pretty obvious
it appears that the biggest change for the US has been in the "dystopia + residual" factor, which implies to me that americans indeed reported closer to the model prediction in 2024 than in 2023.
There's not many Eastern European countries in the list (as in "former Eastern Bloc"), I can only see Czechia and Lithunia towards the bottom of the top 20. I would put Finland into the Northern Europe bucket, and only Lithunia had climbed one spot from 20 in 2023 to 19 in 2024.
Also Slovenia, but eastern europe as a whole (even if the rest did not surpass) has been improving according to the report; I had been trying to spin it optimistically for the US as being less a decline there than improvement elsewhere in the world...
I understand it's largely a cultural and historically rooted designation moreso than a purely geographic one, but it is mildly amusing that Czechia is often colloquially classed as being in "Eastern Europe" while the same is never true of Austria.
Despite this lack of sharpness and unassailable objectivity, the signal sent by all these metrics is generally real: the focus on aggregate economic performance (the infamous GDP) and organizing society entirely around the maximization of monetarily defined wealth is too simplistic, no longer fit-for-purpose (if it ever was) and potentially a complete cul-de-sac.
The list of "happy" countries is more or less the set where various intangible cultural aspects partially mitigate the growing inadequacy of the mainstream socioeconomic apparatus. But it is not a blueprint that can be easily adopted or improved upon by other countries and cultures.
Yet there are no visible paths to workable alternatives (or complements) to the existing system. The simplicity of mapping everything onto a single monetary dimension has been such a successful monopoly and created incredibly strongly entrenched interests. It has left effectively no room for evolving any other broad-based economic infrastructure or tools that might expand what we optimize for to things that evidently matter.
People are frustrated and compile this or that index or meta-index but the expression "put money where your mouth is" neatly expresses the current impasse. Happy happiness day! [2]
[1] https://www.beyond-gdp.world/wise-database/wise-metrics
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Day_of_Happiness