Measuring Happiness Across the Globe - David Loftus

This week’s news included the results of the latest Gallup Poll of global well-being. As widely reported, the study that supposedly measures how happy various countries are put Denmark on top, and Sweden and Canada just behind. The U.S. came in at a sobering 12th place, behind such possibly surprising contenders as Australia (4th), Finland (5th), Venezuela (6th), and Israel (7th).

Now, I have nothing against the notion that the average person in Denmark or even Venezuela is happier than the average American. I only question the survey here as an exercise in critical thinking -- a devil’s advocate response, as it were. As with any poll, the relevant question to ask is: By what criteria did the pollsters measure what they were looking for? I wondered whether average income, state of the local economy, aspects of the education system, or the activity of the entertainment industries in these various nations factored in.

It turns out this is just self-reporting by a mass of individuals across 124 countries. People from Ireland to Burkina Faso, 1,000 in each nation, were asked in person or by telephone to rate their own lives today, and what they expected it to be five years from now, on a scale of 1 to 10. If they decided they had at least a 7 today and an 8 in the future, the survey termed them “thriving”; lower numbers could be “struggling” or “suffering.”

That’s all. The best discussion of the results I’ve run across was by Miami Herald columnist Frida Ghitis. She noted that while wealth, democratic government, warm and sunny weather, religion, and peace and security all tend to correlate with happiness among individuals, these variables often appear to work at cross-purposes on a national level. For instance, many Latin American countries (not very wealthy, and often sporting high rates of crime) rated high in satisfaction. So, too, did the United Arab Emirates and Qatar (highly undemocratic, but very wealthy and inclined to shower their largesse on their tiny populations). China is surging out of poverty but only 12 percent surveyed qualified as “thriving.” (Less surprisingly, restless Egypt and Libya reported 12 percent and 14 percent, respectively.)

For the record, here are the top and bottom 10s:

Countries where the most citizens reported to be “thriving”

1. Denmark (72%)

2. Sweden (69%)

3. Canada (69%)

4. Australia (65%)

5. Finland (64%)

6. Venezuela (64%)

7. Israel (63%)

8. New Zealand (63%)

9. Netherlands (62%)

10. Ireland (62%)

[ 12.  U.S.A.  (59%) ]

Bottom 10: Countries where the fewest citizens reported to be “thriving”

Chad (1%)
Central African Republic (2%)
Haiti (2%)
Burkina Faso (2%)
Cambodia (3%)
Niger (3%)
Tajikistan (3%)
Tanzania (4%)
Mali (4%)
Comoros (4%)

If you want to see the entire Gallup Poll list, go here.


What it comes down to is self-perception, and how each individual, each collection of people, assesses what makes them happy. Americans take their peace, security, and democracy for granted, and tend to obsess about the wealth they haven’t yet gotten, or the things they feel they’ve lost, such as community, or investment value.

I suspect much of what influences these self-perceptions across the planet relates to the general messages that viewers in each country pick up from their news media and entertainment. Go almost anywhere else in the world, and you’ll encounter dozens, hundreds, thousands of people who want to come to the U.S., because they see wealth, health, beauty, and clean streets and homes in the movies and television programs we export to them. When we watch the very same programs here, we focus on the crimes, violence, duplicity, and fear in the shows (and in the news stories).

Religion, sunlight, music, and other things may inspire South Americans to overlook their poverty and crime. What surprises me is that so many Central and West African countries saw themselves at the bottom: Chad (the worst), Central African Republic (2nd worst), Burkina Faso (4th), Mali (9th). I’ve been to Mali, and though it is indeed one of the poorest nations in the world, the people seemed very full of life and happy. Maybe television and movies have shown them a lot more of what the rest of the world has, and they lack.

If there were some objective way to measure general happiness from country to country, I’m sure the results would look very different from this (or any other) year’s Gallup Poll. Maybe the U.S. would rate much higher, maybe it would lower. But I can guarantee you that how we view ourselves (or how any other nation’s people see their own situation) is far from an accurate, truthful, or objective assessment.