As I was sitting in my econ class I began to daydream about summer vacation. In the midst of my phantasm I was struck by a memory of a debate I had done in my high school global economics course. The debate was on which form of economy (capitalism, socialism, or communism) was better in the areas of health care and education. While researching this paper I came across the Global Happiness Report. This stuck in my head because I was tasked with studying socialism, and the ranking reported Northern European socialist countries as the happiest. In this Blog I will be exploring exactly what makes a country happy, and why the Northern European countries tend to be ranked higher.
The first step on my quest to find the happiest country was to return to the place I had first encountered this ranking, and much to my pleasure I discovered that the World Happiness Report 2016 had been updated in between my my last viewing and now. Again I found that the Northern European Countries still dominated the top 10 list. With my source sorted out, it was time to discover why these countries consistently do so well. The World Happiness Report bases its data on an observational experiment gathered over 2013-2015. This data takes the form of a self evaluation known as a Cantril Ladder. The research is conducted by asking roughly 3000 people from each country to fill in the Cantril ladder on a basis of 0-10. In this study 0 is a fabricated dystopia made by the researchers and 10 being the best possible life. At a glance this may make the rankings seem like a silly doctors office pain ranking, but the report is also made up of six other factors which are then added to the responses of the 3000 participants. These variables are: levels of GDP, life expectancy, generosity, social support, freedom, and corruption. Below is the graph in which all the variables are represented.
I know at first this graph is very confusing, but I will do my best to explain it. All the different colors in the graphs represent the different variables transformed into numerical form. The vast majority of the bars are made up of three factors in particular: GDP, social support, and the responses from the Cantril Ladder. At the end of the bars hovering over dystopia is a number line called the 95% confidence interval. This represents where 95% of the mean population is likely to be located.
After finding out how they found the data, I searched for a definite reason why the top ten where the top ten to no avail. From studying the graph I do not believe that there is one single category in which any of the happiest countries run away with a particularly strong statistic, rather it appears that they have an overall better performance in all of the categories which allows them to edge out the competition.
In conclusion, I could not tell exactly what makes these countries the happiest, so naturally I will have to continue my research by applying and receiving a grant from the university to allow me to travel the world and report my own findings.
Citations
Helliwell, J., Layard, R., & Sachs, J. (2016). World Happiness Report 2016, Update (Vol. I). New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
This is actually a great thought piece to think about. Are the countries themselves actually very happy or are they happy because of the people who visit and travel to these countries have happy memories there? Which indeed delves into the deeper argument of what exactly is happiness, is it something that is discernible through different views or is it truly whatever makes the person happy? Final question if you have ever traveled did you visit this place and go in thinking about how happy the place was or did you think about how happy you were going to be because of the fun times ahead?