World Happiness Day: how should we measure contentment in times of war and crisis?
- While happiness might seem hard to come by amid geopolitical, economic and climate uncertainty, recent polls have found that levels remain resilient
- This suggests that factors like a sense of community, goodwill and trust in leadership contribute more to well-being than individual prosperity
The day attracted at least two global surveys on the state of world happiness in this most unhappy of weeks. They were fascinating not just because of their counter-intuitive findings, but because they were clearly looking at very different worlds.
Part of the difference was certainly due to the smaller number of countries polled by Ipsos. Eight of the top 10 happy countries in the WHR – Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Israel, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg and New Zealand – were not included in the Ipsos poll.
But with the exception of the Netherlands, the leaders of the Ipsos poll were recorded as deeply in the dumps in the WHR: China came in at 64th place, Saudi Arabia at 30th, Brazil at 49th, and India close to the miserable bottom at 126th.
Difference also arose because the two surveys asked different questions. Ipsos simply asked if respondents were “very happy, rather happy, not very happy, not happy at all”. The WHR asked “how satisfied are you with your life?”. They asked respondents to think about lots of factors, ranging from health and human relationships to income, social support, personal freedom, lack of corruption and effective government.
For a country to be deemed “happy”, it needed to provide evidence of effective government – ease in raising taxes, a good legal system, and strong delivery of civic services, particularly in health and education. It needed to be good at avoiding war, and without onerous repression.
To be “happy”, a community needed its citizens to show “pro-social behaviour” – moderation, fortitude, a sense of justice, consideration for others – rather than just be individually happy. Unlike the simplistic Ipsos poll, the WHR explores the key drivers of well-being. This is perhaps why its top-ranked list of “happy” countries is so odd.
Out of the top 10, only one has a population over 10 million (the Netherlands), while two (Iceland and Luxembourg) have just a few hundred thousand. Only four contain a city of over 1 million people. All are racially homogeneous, made up of tiny communities where everyone knows everyone else, and has a strong sense of being able to influence decision-making.
The WHR’s rigorous and valuably well-meaning methodology, identifying stable and prosperous “common-interest states”, works better with small communities, but is a doubtful guide for populous countries like China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Brazil which are geographically huge, ethnically diverse, with massive urban agglomerations and in which anonymous government officials are far, far away.
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Also counter-intuitively, the poll found “remarkably resilient” happiness levels in Ukraine: “Despite the magnitude of the suffering and damage in Ukraine, life evaluations remained higher than in the aftermath of the 2014 annexation, supported by a much stronger sense of common purpose, benevolence and trust in their leadership.”
Perhaps the final, and most important, takeaway from the WHR is the clear accumulated evidence that our social progress should not primarily be measured by economic factors like GDP. It is far more important to measure well-being in our communities, and to encourage the fortitude – the “eudaemonia” – that can help us survive today’s dangerous and challenging times.
David Dodwell is CEO of the trade policy and international relations consultancy Strategic Access, focused on developments and challenges facing the Asia-Pacific over the past four decades