20 March 2016
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in 2015: "The pursuit of happiness is serious business". Nowadays this "business" is carefully measured and is used as a barometer of life quality. In fact, many argue that "happiness" combines to give a better picture of human wellbeing than do other individual indicators, such as, income, poverty, education, health or good government.
The first World Happiness Report was published in April 2012 by John Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey Sachs in support of the United Nations High Level Meeting on Happiness and Well-Being. It is now published annually as a compendium to the UNDP’s Human Development Report. The latest report available, the 2016 report, includes more than 105 countries and was published in March 2016 and covers the period 2013 - 2015.
The scale of average evaluations for happiness range from 0 (representing the worst possible life) to 10 (the best possible life). In practice scores tend to range between an average of 3 at the bottom to an average around 7.5 at the top. A difference of four points in average life evaluations separates the 10 happiest countries from the 10 least happy countries.
The 10 Happiest Countries, 2013-2015
Source: World Happiness Report 2016
While the order or ranking has varied slightly from year to year, the composition of top ten happiest countries has been largely constant throughout.
Three-quarters of the differences among countries, and also among regions, are accounted for by differences in six key variables, they are: GDP per capita; healthy years of life expectancy; social support (as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble); trust (as measured by a perceived absence of corruption in government and business); perceived freedom to make life decisions; and generosity (as measured by recent donations, adjusted for differences in income).
The geography of happiness is presented in the map below to illustrate how average 2013-2015 life evaluations differed across the world. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, many developing countries are ranked towards the bottom with scores typically between 3 and 5. Five countries have scores below 3.5: Burundi, Syria, Togo, Afghanistan and Benin.
World Happiness Index in 2015
Source: World Happiness Report 2016
On behalf of all the statisticians at UNCTAD I wish you a joyous International Day of Happiness.
