Comment by bigtones
4 months ago
FYI: This world happiness report is entirely based on asking just one obtuse question, which does not even have the word happiness in the actual question:
Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?
The Howtown channel had a video on this last year, 'One weird metric picks the world's "happiest country"':
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg1--c2r8HE
They link to their sources:
* https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vFO-3Sq5-rorCWBIKwuR-Spk...
Specifically the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale ("Cantril Ladder") is used:
* https://www.sciotoanalysis.com/news/2024/2/9/what-is-cantril...
* https://news.gallup.com/poll/122453/understanding-gallup-use...
It's been around since 1965, so it's presumably been studied a lot and the pros and cons of it explored in the literature.
This is one of those things that just is not true, no matter what sort of evidence is presented, because actual humans can go walk outside their door and see it isn't.
Denmark has ranked as one of the happiest countries for years running, but, Dane here, we hoover up antidepressants like it was our breakfast. There are also deep cultural factors at play that make Danes more likely to mask that everything is fine when it isn't. We have an extremely high incidence of cheating on our partners, which, surprise, comes from a talent for deception, both toward self and others, and we are extremely emotionally avoidant, which results in our nationally very high rate of alcohol consumption and alcoholism.
These happiness indexes are a complete sham and don't observe the full spectrum that goes into how cultures present themselves versus lived reality.
> we hoover up antidepressants like it was our breakfast
Is somebody who uses antidepressants to successfully improve their mood not happy? The question is not "would you be happy if you were unmedicated?"
Pretty good question I would say. It’s rating your life on a scale of 1 to 10. That being said it doesn’t gauge actual happiness. For instance the Nordic countries have very high levels of depression with a third of the some countries being on antidepressants. As a whole I would say on a day to day basis people are much more ebullient and happy seeming in a lot of other places like the Mediterranean. I would wager that this doesn’t capture the percentage of time people are “happy”.
It looks to me that this refers to a 272 page PDF report [0] on the theme "Happiness and Social Media" and the Executive summary explains that it is about much more than that simple question.
[0] https://files.worldhappiness.report/WHR26.pdf
Its hard to frame a question across languages and cultures.
The ladder metaphor isn't the worst.
It's especially hard to express "happiness" across languages. It's a word that is hard to define and generally has no perfect synonyms between languages. It ranges broadly from "present feeling of contentment" to "ultimate feeling of fulfillment in life," and it seems like the survey is aiming for the latter aspect. Therefore the ladder analogy is a decent way to communicate that.
This isn’t gauging happiness but rather if your country is fulfilling your aspirations. I bet someone that works in a role he didn’t really want still might be very happy on a day to day basis but he never had the chance to become the doctor or botanist he always wanted to be.
An obvious issue with the metaphor that comes to mind is that if you consider yourself to have a pretty good life, to be overall happy and satisfied, but you think it's possible to have an objectively much better life, then you'd rank yourself relatively low. And vice versa, if you think your life sucks but it could be much worse you'd rank yourself relatively high.
But, that is still giving a happiness score.
If the society/culture you are living within. Is well off, but swamped with cravings that it could be better. Then you are less happy.
This study isn't trying to measure how 'materially well off you are', it is happiness. So if you are un-satisfied even with your big house, and un-happy, that still says something.
2 replies →
Same problem as rating your pain on the pain scale: is 10 the worst pain I've experienced, or the worst I can imagine? Because I've got a... very vivid imagination. And still, that's the best we can do. I blame an imperfect universe.
1 reply →
Canada here. Feels like we're barely hanging on to rung 5 or 6 and about to fall to the bottom.
Quantifiable example: most recent jobs report we lost 100k+ full time jobs. Biggest job less since COVID. Or the fact our increase in GDP per capita is the (second?) worst in the OECD in the last 10 years. Worse than Japan, Italy, the UK and all the other laggards...
> Canada here. Feels like we're barely hanging on to rung 5 or 6 and about to fall to the bottom.
The Missing Middle podcast went into this in a recent episode, and it's age-dependent: older folks are happier (i.e., they have purchased homes), while younger folks are less happy (cost of living). We Canadians basically have age-dependent wealth-class nowadays.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dizaUBC22o4&t=4m13s
The fact boomers have it so good yet our ranking is dropping like a rock tells you just how bad it is for the working class, especially those who don't have government jobs...
2 replies →
Also Canada, and I disagree pretty strongly with your post. Those two statistics have little bearing on happiness. Housing costs and healthcare access are much bigger concerns.
They are concerns, but not all that closely tied to happiness. Research shows time and time again that deep social connection is the key, if you will, to happiness.
And today's Canadians aren't that great at being social: "In 1986, about one in two Canadians saw their friends on an average day. Now, only about one in five do." — https://www.cbc.ca/radio/nowornever/maintain-friendship-conn...
6 replies →
> healthcare access
What healthcare access? My family has had to go abroad for surgeries twice in the last 3 years because there's no access to healthcare here...
And housing prices? My sister bought a mansion in Texas for less than a condo here.
Arguably these two data points are even worse for Canada. Either way our ranking is dropping.
2 replies →
Here's the more important data point - Canada lost to the USA in three 2026 Winter Olympic Hockey finals. The whole country is hanging their collective heads in shame...
Well USA lost to Venezuela in baseball, so maybe something's going around.
(Canada losing to a USA team made mainly of Canadians is another issue entirely ...)
Doesn't that almost imply the happiest countries in the world have a lack of imagination on what could be better? Or maybe they don't suffer from comparison (the thief of joy) as a culture.
>a lack of imagination on what could be better
I'd argue it's likelier that people are more informed about their absolute position globally. Any screen gets you the mental image of the top of the ladder. So happy people would end up scoring themselves low, because there's a globalized vision of wealth nowadays.
Besides there's a difference in life self-evaluation and experienced happiness, so the report really is a misnomer.
that's also why I much prefer the HDI (Human Development Index), it tracks more meaningful metrics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
I mean.. even if I was a bit worse off financially, if the leadership in the country was even borderline normal, I would give a much higher rating than currently.
Do you mean normal like James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, Richard M. Nixon, and George W. Bush?