The 2019 World Happiness Report came out a few months ago. As always, interesting - yet so full of technical details, explanations,and illustrations, it makes for rather distracted reading. Hard to see the forest what with all those trees. I was mostly interested in the happiest developed countries, and here there are:
Some explanations are in order:
The Happiness measure was a composite of various subjective well-being components, including life evaluation, positive affect and negative affect:
Life evaluation was a number given by survey respondents, who were asked to place the status of their lives on a “ladder” scale ranging from 0 to 10, where 0 means the worst possible life and 10 the best possible life.
Positive affect was based on survey responses to questions regarding previous-day happiness, laughter, and enjoyment.
Negative affect was based on responses to questions regarding previous-day worry, sadness, and anger
GDP per capita was calculated in terms of Purchasing Power Parity and based on World Bank data.
Healthy life expectancy at birth was based on data from the World Health Organization.
Social support was based on responses to the question: “If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them, or not?”
Generosity was based on responses to the question “Have you donated money to a charity in the past month?”
Perception of corruption was based on responses to the questions: “Is corruption widespread throughout the government or not?” and ““Is corruption widespread within businesses or not?”
Freedom to make life choices was based on the question “Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?”
The “Dystopia” measure was a statistical calculation and not based directly on responses to a question.
A few tidbits:
Per-capita income and healthy life expectancy had significant effects on life evaluations, but not on either positive or negative affect. In other words, income and life expectancy have more to do with how we evaluate our lives and less to do with how we feel on a day-to-day basis.
Freedom to make life choices and generosity have a larger influence on positive affect than on life evaluation. Generosity reflects a sense of positive community engagement, and is a central way that humans connect with each other. Bottom line: freedom and sense of community make us feel good.
Negative affect is significantly reduced by social support, freedom, and absence of corruption. In other words, corruption, lack of social support, and lack of freedom make us feel lousy.
Reference:
Helliwell, J., Layard, R., & Sachs, J. (2019). World Happiness Report 2019, New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network. https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2019/#read