Why are Countries Happy?
February 16, 2007 1:42 pm economics, insight, psychology, worldMarco replied to my previous blog post:
There are a lot of questions as to *why* these numbers are the way they are.
The article has a few statements on this:
Further analysis showed that a nation’s level of happiness was most closely associated with health levels (correlation of .62), followed by wealth (.52), and then provision of education (.51).
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There is a belief that capitalism leads to unhappy people. However, when people are asked if they are happy with their lives, people in countries with good healthcare, a higher GDP per captia, and access to education were much more likely to report being happy.
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We were surprised to see countries in Asia scoring so low, with China 82nd, Japan 90th and India 125th. These are countries that are thought as having a strong sense of collective identity which other researchers have associated with well-being.
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The frustrations of modern life, and the anxieties of the age, seem to be much less significant compared to the health, financial and educational needs in other parts of the World.
So the answers are perhaps not so mysterious: people who are materially comfortable, healthy, and well-educated are happier, but individualism also plays an important role (or else Japan would be way up on the scale).
February 16th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Well, yes: that’s not mysterious–but to have the US score *much* better than Germany (and better than the UK) raises some questions:
.- Isn’t our health-care the worst in the civilized world? I mean, aren’t Americans going in droves to Cuba for medical attention? Those are my anti-HMO talking points, anyway.
.- And WEALTH!? Isn’t America a nation of endebted, under-paid, over-worked wage slaves? Sure, some of the elite (those guys with college educations, right?) do *okay*–but the average guy? Getting further into debt as congress votes down yet another minimum wage increase. Unlike the UK where people are paid a living wage just for living–as the name implies!
.- EDUCATION!? Are you daft? Compare the US to the big-name countries in Europe … the US can’t *find* the big-name countries in Europe. I mean, c’mon–we can barely tie our shoes.
I don’t believe any of this, of course–and not just in a US-centric storm of hyprbolized arguments either. Most people don’t trash-talk the US quite that naively (although some do). But one would expect that clocking in at 23, the US with its horrible health-care system and institutionalized obesity and mad cow disease, pandemic consumer debt, and horiffic ‘edutainment’ system should score a lot lower if those indicators were, really, the primary factors.
-Marco
February 16th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
If one were to really believe that the US is way worse than the rest of the world in these factors, then yes, one would also believe that it would score worse than on the happiness scale.
Of course, the US isn’t worse than most of the rest of the world in wealth, health care, or education. In actual fact, it’s quite good on all of these, and the people are very happy because of it. It’s just not the best at any of these factors.
I guess it’s really a matter of who you talk to; the misinformed will, of course, have incorrect expectations.