Speaker 1: Pushkin. I hope you enjoyed our special episode celebrating the
Speaker 1: International Day of Happiness and the release of the World
Speaker 1: Happiness Report on March twentieth. In case you missed it,
Speaker 1: I asked several of my fellow Pushkin podcast hosts to
Speaker 1: pretend that they were an author on this year's World
Speaker 1: Happiness Report. I asked each of them, what chapter would
Speaker 1: you write? Okay, well, this one's really easy for me.
Speaker 1: Mental chatter.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I was objecting to the phrase it's the journey,
Speaker 2: not the destination.
Speaker 1: The journey and the destination. It's the journey and the destination.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'll buy that.
Speaker 1: Well. The World Happiness Report twenty twenty four is now
Speaker 1: finally out, so over the next few episodes, I'll be
Speaker 1: talking to the report's real authors about the issues they
Speaker 1: think are most pressing for the planet's well being. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: many people never get a chance to learn about the
Speaker 1: full contents of the annual report because the headlines often
Speaker 1: focus on just one attention grabbing part, the annual country
Speaker 1: rankings of happiness around the world, which does kind of
Speaker 1: make sense. I mean, we all want to know how's
Speaker 1: my country doing. So in this episode, I'll start by
Speaker 1: diving into those rankings to find out what they do
Speaker 1: and don't tell us about how to live happier lives.
Speaker 1: And I have the perfect guide.
Speaker 2: Hi am John Halliwell at the University of British Columbia
Speaker 2: and the Vancouver School of Economics.
Speaker 1: John knows all there is to know about the infamous
Speaker 1: country rankings because he was there at the founding of
Speaker 1: the first World Happiness Report.
Speaker 2: I've been in there right from the.
Speaker 1: Beginning, starting more than a decade ago. The International Day
Speaker 1: of Happiness and its accompanying report. We're an attempt by
Speaker 1: the United Nations to get governments to take the happiness
Speaker 1: of people around the world more seriously and to enact
Speaker 1: policies that would improve our wellbeing. And the United Nations
Speaker 1: quickly realized that ranking country level well being was a
Speaker 1: big thing. But how does it work well? The rankings
Speaker 1: are compiled from data gathered by the polling company Gallop,
Speaker 1: which asks people around the world the same set of
Speaker 1: questions in a huge survey known as the Gallup World Pole,
Speaker 1: which is given to around one thousand people in each country.
Speaker 1: The happiness ratings come from people's responses to a metric
Speaker 1: known as life evaluation, or the chantral ladder. People are
Speaker 1: asked to rate their current life as a whole, using
Speaker 1: the metaphor of a ladder, in which the best possible
Speaker 1: life would be a ten all the way at the
Speaker 1: top of the ladder, and the worst possible life would
Speaker 1: be a zero down at the bottom. Everyone's ratings are
Speaker 1: then average together into country level happiness scores, and to
Speaker 1: make sure small fluctuations don't sway their rankings, the scientists
Speaker 1: use a three year average for each country. But the
Speaker 1: report doesn't just measure people's life evaluations. People in each
Speaker 1: country are also asked about their emotions. They report on
Speaker 1: the positive feelings they've experienced specifically laughter, enjoyment, and interest,
Speaker 1: as well as the not so positive ones worry, sadness,
Speaker 1: and anger. And the gallup world pole doesn't stop there.
Speaker 1: It also includes a set of other questions that help
Speaker 1: researchers explain why countries differ in their overall well being,
Speaker 1: and this year, researchers have discovered that six of those
Speaker 1: other questions seem to matter a lot. What's factor number one?
Speaker 1: It's a country's wealth as measured by their GDP that
Speaker 1: is the total value of goods and services produced in
Speaker 1: one year, divided by the total population. What's factor number two,
Speaker 1: it's a citizen's average life expectancy. This one takes into
Speaker 1: account how the nation's health plays into its happiness. The
Speaker 1: third and fourth variables involve people's ability to act freely
Speaker 1: without government intervention or corruption. Those questions are are you
Speaker 1: satisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with
Speaker 1: your life? And is corruption widespread throughout the government or businesses.
Speaker 1: The fifth and six factors have to do with people's
Speaker 1: social connection and generosity. People are asked if you were
Speaker 1: in trouble, do you have friends or relatives you could
Speaker 1: count on to help you? And also things like have
Speaker 1: you donated money to a charity in the past month.
Speaker 1: These days, the World Happiness Reports country rankings are a
Speaker 1: big annual event, But when the report first started, Jonatus
Speaker 1: Co authors had no idea it would have such a
Speaker 1: huge impact.
Speaker 2: We were surprised that the first report got as much
Speaker 2: public attention as it did to us. It spoke to
Speaker 2: a need for a broadly available set of data reflecting
Speaker 2: the quality of lives all over the world. There was
Speaker 2: nothing like that regularly available to the media and to
Speaker 2: people in general, and so we kept on producing the report.
Speaker 2: The interest was broad and it got broader, so that
Speaker 2: in each report we had a bigger take up, and
Speaker 2: it was initially people, but I think that then translated
Speaker 2: into a broader interest that then encouraged governments to actually
Speaker 2: focus on well being, all of which, of course then
Speaker 2: requires that you build a public service that's trained in
Speaker 2: well being science and knows how to analyze policies to
Speaker 2: deliver what's best for better lives.
Speaker 1: My understanding is the rankings have been in there since
Speaker 1: the original twenty eleven report.
Speaker 2: Correct, there was some disagreement among our three founding editors.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to have rankings at all. I said,
Speaker 2: that's not the way in which happiness is not a
Speaker 2: zero sum game. It's for everybody to improve their happiness.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter whether they're happier or not than their neighbors.
Speaker 2: So we didn't even put in numbers, but I had
Speaker 2: to go down with my finger and count out because
Speaker 2: people wanted to know what number they were in the list.
Speaker 2: So in the next one we put in the numbers,
Speaker 2: and the numbers have been there ever since. We use
Speaker 2: the rankings as a way because quite clearly it's a
Speaker 2: primary point attention for people. They want to know how
Speaker 2: their country does and how that does in comparison with
Speaker 2: other countries whom they think of as their peers. The
Speaker 2: rankings may be what brings the area clicks, but our
Speaker 2: purpose is not to stop there, not even to emphasize those,
Speaker 2: but to dig deeper into what makes for better lives
Speaker 2: so that people can do more about their own lives
Speaker 2: and the lives of those around them and help move
Speaker 2: the arrow.
Speaker 1: This is why I'm so excited that you've taken the
Speaker 1: time to talk to us today, because I feel like
Speaker 1: sometimes when I see the news coverage of the World
Speaker 1: Happiness Report, it's just like, this is the country that's
Speaker 1: number one, and then it ends there. But I think
Speaker 1: as we dig deeper and try to understand where those
Speaker 1: rankings come from and what we can do differently, that's
Speaker 1: the part that's going to matter so much more.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 1: And so before we kind of jump into the rankings
Speaker 1: this year, I wanted to talk about what goes into
Speaker 1: the measurements that make up the World Happiness Report. So
Speaker 1: where do these data come from, and when we're talking
Speaker 1: about happier countries, what are the specific measurements that are
Speaker 1: going into that.
Speaker 2: It's an important question to talk about because we keep
Speaker 2: emphasizing to people this is not our opinions that they're hearing,
Speaker 2: it's their own opinions, because what we report are the
Speaker 2: average value of the answers to a single question how
Speaker 2: people evaluate their lives on a scale of zero to ten.
Speaker 2: And those rankings don't tell you anything, of course, they
Speaker 2: just tell you the state of play within a country.
Speaker 2: And then the next interesting question, which we started answering
Speaker 2: in more detail, was why are these countries different? And
Speaker 2: some people treat our explanations as the primary measure, and
Speaker 2: we keep trying to remind them that what we're presenting
Speaker 2: as not our expertise, but simply telling them what people
Speaker 2: in their countries have said.
Speaker 1: What are the questions that people are answering in these surveys.
Speaker 2: Well, when I entered this field more than twenty five
Speaker 2: years ago, I thought of myself as Aristotle's research assistant,
Speaker 2: because he had said millennia ago that if you want
Speaker 2: to find out what makes for a good life, you
Speaker 2: ask people in a reflective moment to think about their
Speaker 2: life as a whole. Then he listed a lot of
Speaker 2: factors that ought to underlie that, including living a good
Speaker 2: and virtuous life, and he said Aristotle that positive emotions,
Speaker 2: laughter and fun were a part of that. So the
Speaker 2: emotions are important. Nobody thinks not did you feel anger, stress,
Speaker 2: worry yesterday? And did you feel positive emotions yesterday? Yes
Speaker 2: or no. But some people think, because the World Happiness
Speaker 2: Support is called the World Happiness Report, that it's all
Speaker 2: about affective measures or emotional measures or short term measures
Speaker 2: of people's well being, and or answer to the people
Speaker 2: who say this is all about short term moods and
Speaker 2: it isn't a serious business, it's all fluff, by reminding
Speaker 2: people that are two ways of using the word happiness.
Speaker 2: One is as an emotion, how happy were you yesterday?
Speaker 2: And the other is how happy are you about something?
Speaker 2: That could be the baggage retrieval system they have at Heathrow,
Speaker 2: or it could be anything. But the point is it
Speaker 2: doesn't require the emotion of happiness. It's saying how satisfied
Speaker 2: are you with that? And so the judgmental use of
Speaker 2: the word happiness is our main focus in the report.
Speaker 2: We also include, of course, the affect of measure and
Speaker 2: people sometimes and rightly so, get confused about these two
Speaker 2: different uses of the word, because we use the word
Speaker 2: both ways ourselves. But for us, it's these overall life
Speaker 2: evaluations that are of fundamental importance.
Speaker 1: And so now that we've gotten the history of the
Speaker 1: report out of the way, let's get to the thing
Speaker 1: that I think is on everybody's mind, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: who's the highest right country this year? Who are you
Speaker 1: seeing coming out in the newest data as the highest
Speaker 1: on the list?
Speaker 2: Because the rankings are based on a three year average,
Speaker 2: and Finland was pretty well ahead of the average last year,
Speaker 2: it's no surprise that Finland is in number one again.
Speaker 2: What's interesting to see is how this plays out in Finland.
Speaker 2: Frequently the Finns say we're not the happiest country in
Speaker 2: the world, and what they're thinking of, in part is
Speaker 2: the other version of happiness that they don't see, all
Speaker 2: the laughter in the streets that they're used to thinking
Speaker 2: of as happiness. But then you ask them, how is
Speaker 2: life in Finland? Tell us about it? Where are the
Speaker 2: things you enjoy and what do you value about it?
Speaker 2: It turns out they end up seeing the importance of trust,
Speaker 2: of warm social relations, of caring about each other. They're
Speaker 2: not surprised to hear that when wallets were experimentally dropped,
Speaker 2: the highest proportion anywhere ten out of ten, was in Helsinki.
Speaker 2: And so they see that, they appreciate it, they understand
Speaker 2: that it's maybe not that way elsewhere. They don't boast
Speaker 2: about it. That's another feature of the Finns. Some of
Speaker 2: the Finnish researchers say that above the other Nordic countries,
Speaker 2: even though the other Nordic countries are richer and more
Speaker 2: outfront than some other ways, is that they don't take
Speaker 2: themselves so seriously. They don't rank themselves with each other
Speaker 2: as much. They're less materialistic and more concerned with each other,
Speaker 2: and that's quietly okay with them. I would have to
Speaker 2: say that a country that boasted about its high position
Speaker 2: is probably not likely to sustain it long because that's
Speaker 2: not the point. And when Denmark was highest, they didn't
Speaker 2: boast about it, but they set about trying to learn
Speaker 2: the lessons from the science of happiness and spread them
Speaker 2: not just in Denmark but in other countries. And that's
Speaker 2: a classic Nordic way, and it's one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why the five Nordic countries are always in the top ten,
Speaker 2: that they are also among the world leaders in untied
Speaker 2: foreign aid, in the receipt of refugees, of leading the
Speaker 2: international movements to spread well being around the world. Those
Speaker 2: all hang together and they make a consistent package.
Speaker 1: So that's thing number one about the report that's kind
Speaker 1: of not very surprising. Finland's at the top yet again,
Speaker 1: and they're up there with all these other Scandinavian countries.
Speaker 1: Something else that's occurred in other happiness reports in the
Speaker 1: past is that there's big gaps between the top of
Speaker 1: the list and the bottom. Is that something that you
Speaker 1: also saw in the most recent report.
Speaker 2: The gap, if anything, has become a little wider, And
Speaker 2: that's I guess because Afghanistan is dropping further and further
Speaker 2: still having been last for several years, it's now further
Speaker 2: behind the rest.
Speaker 1: One of the surprises that I saw in the report
Speaker 1: was that there are a few countries that kind of
Speaker 1: you jumped up much higher than they'd been historically, and
Speaker 1: a few other countries that had fallen down. And so
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of the countries that jumped up.
Speaker 1: Any big kind of like surprises in terms of who
Speaker 1: got much higher in terms of their happiness it.
Speaker 2: Was nice to see Costa Rica back in the top twenty.
Speaker 2: They were in the position twelve in twenty thirteen. Here
Speaker 2: they are back because they're a very good example. They're
Speaker 2: always the happiest country in Latin America and they touch
Speaker 2: bases on all of the six factors we talked about.
Speaker 2: Another thing that we highlight this year because we're talking
Speaker 2: especially about happiness at different ages, is that we're seeing
Speaker 2: a continuation of the gap between Central and Eastern Europe
Speaker 2: and Western Europe, which was very big before the Wall
Speaker 2: came down. It's been gradually narrowing over that whole period,
Speaker 2: and we find this year, especially for the young, so low.
Speaker 2: The gap for the old between Central and Eastern Europe
Speaker 2: and Western Europe is still about a full point on
Speaker 2: the ten point scale. For the young, the gap is gone.
Speaker 2: So the young in Central and Eastern Europe are essentially
Speaker 2: the same appreciation of their lives as in Western Europe,
Speaker 2: and so there's a transition. To see. The overall transition
Speaker 2: isn't complete yet, but for the young it is. It's
Speaker 2: quite notable the young have become less happy in other
Speaker 2: parts of the world, especially in North America.
Speaker 1: So Costa Rica seems to be going up in the rankings,
Speaker 1: but you also identified a few countries that seemed to
Speaker 1: be going down. Which were those the.
Speaker 2: Drops that we know because they were going out of
Speaker 2: the top twenty was Germany in the United States United
Speaker 2: States just above Germany last year, just above Germany this year.
Speaker 2: But what was fifteen and sixteen is now twenty three
Speaker 2: and twenty four in both cases, especially the United States,
Speaker 2: due to drops in all age groups, but especially in
Speaker 2: the young.
Speaker 1: So this is sort of pretty bad for me being
Speaker 1: from the United States, thinking that my country is now
Speaker 1: no longer in the top twenty. I mean, was this
Speaker 1: something that shocked the researchers or is this something that
Speaker 1: you all expected to find?
Speaker 2: The underlying trends have been there for a while. It
Speaker 2: was not COVID related, So these things essentially are trends
Speaker 2: that started before COVID. It's more or less carried on
Speaker 2: the same way with only modest changes in balanced during COVID.
Speaker 2: But a bit of a surprise because that's quite a
Speaker 2: big drop, and it's similar in Canada. They draw among
Speaker 2: the young is so substantial. So if you actually look
Speaker 2: at the changes between twenty six to twenty ten, first
Speaker 2: years of the poll and the most recent three years,
Speaker 2: Canada and the United States have been among the biggest
Speaker 2: drops over that whole period. It's not just one year,
Speaker 2: it's over accumulating over that period, because Canada was fourth
Speaker 2: and is fifteenth now and the US was eleven and
Speaker 2: it's now twenty third. So you can see those are
Speaker 2: quite big drops.
Speaker 1: So what's behind the rise and fall of these nations
Speaker 1: and the happiness rankings? What are some countries getting right
Speaker 1: and others getting wrong? The Happiness Lab will be right back.
Speaker 1: One thing that makes the World Happiness Reports so important
Speaker 1: is that it doesn't just measure the differences in happiness
Speaker 1: of people around the world. It also tries to determine
Speaker 1: the factors that lead to those differences in well being,
Speaker 1: and John says that this year six factors have emerged
Speaker 1: as being important for the differences he and his team
Speaker 1: have observed. Those predictive factors are country GDP, life expectancy,
Speaker 1: freedom of choice, freedom from corruption, social connection, and how
Speaker 1: generous people are. I wanted John to help us better
Speaker 1: understand these factors, starting with country wealth. There's an old
Speaker 1: saying that money can't buy you happiness. But if that's true,
Speaker 1: why does GDP matter so much for a country's happiness ranking.
Speaker 2: Aristotle was quite explicit about it. You have to have
Speaker 2: the basic stuff to live on, or it's hard to
Speaker 2: actually get a chance to enjoy and spread out. If
Speaker 2: you add on to that list of questions, not just
Speaker 2: the average level of income, but did you have enough
Speaker 2: to eat or not have enough to eat at some
Speaker 2: time in the last two weeks, the basic survival part
Speaker 2: of GDP is very important. So to move people out
Speaker 2: of a situation where they can only think about the
Speaker 2: ways to get their next meal is extraordinarily important. There's
Speaker 2: been a lot of discussion about whether at some stage
Speaker 2: the income effect starts to peter out. You get less
Speaker 2: bang for the buck as you get richer. Same with education.
Speaker 2: Education matters for well being, but if you put in
Speaker 2: the other things that support well being, education itself drops out.
Speaker 2: In other words, it's a way of allowing people to
Speaker 2: provide a good life, and so education without good purpose
Speaker 2: doesn't do any good for people. Same with income, But income,
Speaker 2: like good health, is kind of fundamental as a building
Speaker 2: block for good lives, and everybody knew that before there
Speaker 2: was a World Happiness Report, So that if you ask
Speaker 2: the development agencies, there anybody else say what are you
Speaker 2: after or after GDP per capita healthy life expectancy. But
Speaker 2: when we get these data from people, we find out, well,
Speaker 2: that's maybe half the story. But the other half of
Speaker 2: the story is what is the social context in which
Speaker 2: people are living? Is there a high enough level of
Speaker 2: trust around them? We use a measure of corruption. There's
Speaker 2: a sense of personal freedom. How free are you to
Speaker 2: make your key life decisions? Do you have someone to
Speaker 2: count on in times of trouble. That's a very limited
Speaker 2: measure of the warmth of your social connections, but it
Speaker 2: turns out to be very important. And finally, and less
Speaker 2: emphasized by Aristotle is a benevolence to what extent and
Speaker 2: we use donations net of the effective income, but it's
Speaker 2: very apparent that doing things ideally with others for others
Speaker 2: is very important. One measure that we have only one
Speaker 2: year of so it hasn't got into the basic modeling,
Speaker 2: but we find out to be very important is whether
Speaker 2: people think their wallet would be returned if they lost.
Speaker 2: An actual experiment show that people answer that question. They
Speaker 2: understand the relative likelihood of a wallet return looking across
Speaker 2: countries and a wallet return is nice because it's not
Speaker 2: just honesty, it's also benevolence, because you could be perfectly
Speaker 2: trustworthy but still not take the time out of your
Speaker 2: life to pick up a wallet and make sure it
Speaker 2: got back to the owner. But that's what people do
Speaker 2: in these high trust countries and the high ranking countries.
Speaker 2: The wallet return is very high in the Nordic countries,
Speaker 2: and it's very important. There was a survey we had
Speaker 2: that measured what people's risk was of mental health problems,
Speaker 2: being a victim of violent crime, or being unemployed, and
Speaker 2: the positive effect coming from thinking your wallet would be
Speaker 2: returned if found by either a stranger or police, or
Speaker 2: especially both was way more important than the negative on
Speaker 2: people's life evaluations from those other factors, which are very important.
Speaker 1: One of the things that really seems to matter is
Speaker 1: having somebody to count on that particular metric. And interestingly,
Speaker 1: if I understand the report right, that seems to be
Speaker 1: more important than reporting that you're not lonely. It seems
Speaker 1: to be the positive effect of social connection rather than
Speaker 1: the negative. One walk through why that's so important for me.
Speaker 2: That's a good point. And there's a new survey that
Speaker 2: was done in twenty twenty two the Meta Gallop World
Speaker 2: Connection Survey, where they measured on the same scale to
Speaker 2: what extent are you connected with other people? To what
Speaker 2: extent are you supported by others you're socially supported? And
Speaker 2: then to what extent do you feel lonely? On that
Speaker 2: same scale, right across the world, feelings of positive social
Speaker 2: support were twice as frequent as loneliness. Despite the fact
Speaker 2: loneliness and the Surgeon General's report and you name it
Speaker 2: is being treated as a major crisis. At least I personally,
Speaker 2: and I think most of our analysts would agree, it's
Speaker 2: much more important to emphasize the positives than the negatives, because,
Speaker 2: in a sense, a supportive social environment not only is
Speaker 2: twice as important is the absence of loneliness, it cuts
Speaker 2: loneliness because of course, the best cure for loneliness is
Speaker 2: a vaccine, and the best vaccine is a friend. And
Speaker 2: so it's these positive things that should get the emphasis.
Speaker 2: And that's the way to, as it were, cure loneliness
Speaker 2: is not to wait till it happens, but to have
Speaker 2: a social environment that is supportive.
Speaker 1: And this seems to mirror something else that you've seen
Speaker 1: time again in the report as I understand it, which
Speaker 1: is that sometimes these positive behaviors or even the positive
Speaker 1: emotions seem to be winning out in terms of these
Speaker 1: life evaluation measures over the negative behaviors and the negative emotions.
Speaker 1: What are some other examples of this, Well.
Speaker 2: It turns up in lots of different domains that people
Speaker 2: do value the chance to do things for other people
Speaker 2: and with other people. There were surveys in one report
Speaker 2: about how people were happier in green environments and in
Speaker 2: less noisy environments than elsewhere, and we had the authors
Speaker 2: go back to show who people were with and who
Speaker 2: you were with at the time you were doing something
Speaker 2: was much more important than what you were doing. So
Speaker 2: people were happier commuting with a friend than they were
Speaker 2: walking alone in a beautiful environment. Of course, the best
Speaker 2: was to be in the green environment with a friend,
Speaker 2: but that shows you the dominance of the social context
Speaker 2: over other aspects. One issue that came up in Issuear's
Speaker 2: report is that the gallop world pole has now been
Speaker 2: going on long enough that we have the potential for
Speaker 2: splitting out generational effects from age effects. You know, there
Speaker 2: is a sort of midlife low that appears in a
Speaker 2: lot of the data on an age basis, and so
Speaker 2: we have dug into that, but also trying to separate
Speaker 2: it from when people were born, and so we split
Speaker 2: the population into those born before nineteen sixty five boomers
Speaker 2: and their predecessors, those born after nineteen eighty, who were
Speaker 2: then the Millennials and Gen Z, and then the intervening
Speaker 2: group of Gen X. And then what we did this
Speaker 2: is continuing with the benevolence theme. There was a huge
Speaker 2: increase in benevolence during the pandemic years compared to twenty
Speaker 2: seventeen to twenty nineteen. That boost is still going on now,
Speaker 2: right through twenty twenty three. And we asked ourselves, because
Speaker 2: this is a big item of discussion, especially in the
Speaker 2: United States, whether the Millennials and their successors are the
Speaker 2: ME generation, the Wei generation, or just like other generations.
Speaker 2: So we were able to look at this boost in
Speaker 2: benevolent behavior and then has this boost been the same
Speaker 2: for the millennials as it has for the earlier generations.
Speaker 2: And first of all, we found that that boost is
Speaker 2: everywhere across all generations. In terms of the ME versus
Speaker 2: WE generation. We find out that the millennials jumped up
Speaker 2: even more than their predecessors to help others when help
Speaker 2: was required during those COVID years. So that's a very
Speaker 2: encouraging piece of evidence to offset some of the pessimism
Speaker 2: that people seem to have about the world falling apart
Speaker 2: behind them.
Speaker 1: Oh I love that. I love that statistic. One of
Speaker 1: the other things I was so interested in in this
Speaker 1: report is that you're actually looking at these differences across
Speaker 1: age and whether the rankings hold not just for everyone,
Speaker 1: but whether they hold as well for young individuals versus
Speaker 1: older individuals and so on. And so, you know what,
Speaker 1: did you see the rankings pretty consistent across Asia? Do
Speaker 1: we see some big differences.
Speaker 2: Huge differences. Canada and the United States, the rankings for
Speaker 2: the old are fifty or more ranks higher than for
Speaker 2: the young. There are many other countries where the rankings
Speaker 2: for the old are forty or more lower than for
Speaker 2: the young. So they're huge differences in these rankings across countries,
Speaker 2: and in some cases where the young are doing very
Speaker 2: well and the old not so well. It's because every
Speaker 2: country is different in generational effects and so on. You
Speaker 2: look at the older people in countries that are part
Speaker 2: of the former Yugoslavia, where they were at each other's
Speaker 2: throats literally in the nineteen nineties. The people who were
Speaker 2: alive and seeing that as at Ultserce or older children
Speaker 2: at that time, are now very unhappy. Still they're bearing
Speaker 2: the scars of that. So trauma leaves its scars, and
Speaker 2: so that's one of the reasons why the old have
Speaker 2: not so quickly followed the young in some of those
Speaker 2: countries in their higher well being. However, the young can
Speaker 2: rise relative to the old in a newer refashioned world.
Speaker 2: Is grounds for some optimism. Although it may not be
Speaker 2: completely easy to pull people out and to expunge those
Speaker 2: awful memories of the past, it's possible to create new
Speaker 2: generations who are less burdened by that and help them
Speaker 2: to form their positive connections with their neighbors and with
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: So as we walk through these six factors, you know,
Speaker 1: again being from the US, my kind of US centric
Speaker 1: version of this report, I'm curious which of those you
Speaker 1: think were really going down in the case of the US,
Speaker 1: Like over the last few years, what of those six
Speaker 1: factors have changed in the US to kind of make
Speaker 1: us drop so significantly in the rankings.
Speaker 2: Well, my guess is that the social environment within which
Speaker 2: people operate. I mean there have been drops in trust.
Speaker 2: That's evident. It's not clear whether there have been drops
Speaker 2: in social connections or not. There have probably been drops
Speaker 2: in the warmth and trustworthiness of those social connections. We
Speaker 2: have had chapters on the corrosive effects of the social
Speaker 2: media use of certain types on young people. We have
Speaker 2: a special chapter in this year's report on young people
Speaker 2: per se finding that they're getting less happy once they
Speaker 2: get into middle school and carry on right through into
Speaker 2: their working careers. And some of that may be just
Speaker 2: learning about life, and some of it may be that
Speaker 2: the social media on average have not been so productive
Speaker 2: of good relations that we know from other research lower
Speaker 2: happiness levels. And there's an underlying negativity bias that humans have.
Speaker 2: They react more sharply and quickly to negative news. If
Speaker 2: you then combine that negativity bias with a huge increase
Speaker 2: in the range of information sources that people have, then
Speaker 2: they may well be deluged in negative information that drives
Speaker 2: them a long way from reality. And we know that
Speaker 2: from the wallet data exacs, because we know that it's
Speaker 2: expected wallet return that makes you happy. But we also
Speaker 2: know that people underestimate the likelihood of their wallet being returned,
Speaker 2: which means that negative bias is very costly. So we're
Speaker 2: needlessly unhappy because we don't understand that the people around
Speaker 2: us are kinder and better than we think they are.
Speaker 2: Because to walk down a street, as they do in
Speaker 2: Helsinki and see someone on the street not as a danger,
Speaker 2: not as a stranger, but a friend they haven't met yet,
Speaker 2: and that's very important for your happiness to think you're
Speaker 2: in that kind of environment. It's possible that what's going
Speaker 2: on in the United States, and this is true in
Speaker 2: Canadas too, and also it's got its echoes in Australia
Speaker 2: and New Zealand, is that not only are more negative
Speaker 2: news there, but the young people are in some sense
Speaker 2: feeling guilty about it, whether it's the past treatments of minorities,
Speaker 2: of pre colonial populations, treatment of the environment, any range
Speaker 2: of issues. They're feeling that they're either the victims of
Speaker 2: what others have done before them, or are carrying collectively
Speaker 2: as a group, the guilt for producing these things. And
Speaker 2: I suspect that's because those drops in the young people's
Speaker 2: happiness are not global. They're fixed to the societies in
Speaker 2: which the social media have been more dominant, which the
Speaker 2: distribution of negative stories about the past and lack of
Speaker 2: positive stories about the potential future have been more prevalent.
Speaker 2: But my instinct is that those two things belong in
Speaker 2: the same bag that in fact, it is this confluence
Speaker 2: of based negative reporting and biased in the sense of
Speaker 2: not reflecting the reality in which people are living, coupled
Speaker 2: with people feeling that things are going badly in ways
Speaker 2: that they don't see any easy way of fixing. We
Speaker 2: know that natural disasters, although they're terrible, they offer immediately
Speaker 2: for most people the chance to do something to help.
Speaker 2: They rush in and help. People do want to help others,
Speaker 2: But for some of these things that people are worrying
Speaker 2: about now, they don't see any easy way of jumping
Speaker 2: in and making a difference. And it's part of the
Speaker 2: research that we report on in the world. Happiness support
Speaker 2: is to help expose to people that the quality of
Speaker 2: their own local social environment, which is so important, is
Speaker 2: affected by their own behavior. So they should be going
Speaker 2: out with a smile and a greeting and to help
Speaker 2: other people and not presume the worst about them, but
Speaker 2: in fact connect with them. For mutual advantage. Sometimes it
Speaker 2: takes a little bit of a push to get people
Speaker 2: to think in those positive terms, but there's a big payoff.
Speaker 1: And so as I think about kind of some of
Speaker 1: these factors kind of playing in together, if you were
Speaker 1: going to create the sort of ideal country, right, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of cherry picking bits that one country is doing
Speaker 1: and kind of adding it to another country, what would
Speaker 1: that kind of like ideal country look like like? What
Speaker 1: would it really build into boost happiness as highly as possible.
Speaker 2: That's a good one. One of the things we found
Speaker 2: is that of those six factors we do measure, the
Speaker 2: top countries all do well in all of them. You
Speaker 2: can't do it on one thing. You can only do
Speaker 2: it by having a full tapestry. I think the way
Speaker 2: it could play out, you see, you don't want to
Speaker 2: have an idea that there's a recipe for being a
Speaker 2: really happy country. There are many recipes, but what has
Speaker 2: to be true about a really happy country is that
Speaker 2: people really do care about each other. They're characterized by equality,
Speaker 2: and the equality that's really important is the equality of opportunity,
Speaker 2: the equality of regard, the equality of acceptance, the equality
Speaker 2: of access to basic services, We talked earlier about the
Speaker 2: importance of income, but as important as the kind of
Speaker 2: things you can buy with your own income, it's the
Speaker 2: kind of things we provide for each other by way
Speaker 2: of education, access, education, quality, healthcare, access, peace and freedom,
Speaker 2: and a trustworthy local social environment. And some of that
Speaker 2: can be fixed up by the neighbors and improved by
Speaker 2: the neighbors. Some of it requires an add on of
Speaker 2: national level institutions that permit people to connect rather than
Speaker 2: be unconnected. If you wanted me to focus on something
Speaker 2: that could be fixed in almost every country to make
Speaker 2: it a better country is that over the last twenty years,
Speaker 2: there's been a move driven by complaints of something going wrong,
Speaker 2: somebody being molested, somebody being shot, and those things that
Speaker 2: go wrong are what are reported in the news. So
Speaker 2: then almost every organization now has a risk committee, and
Speaker 2: the risk committee is designed to stop things going wrong.
Speaker 2: And so they shut the kids off in schools with
Speaker 2: locked doors, they shut people in elder care facilities behind
Speaker 2: locked doors, and in the process, and this is true
Speaker 2: of almost all experiments that are trying to make lives better,
Speaker 2: that it's increasingly hard even to do the experiments we've
Speaker 2: been running experiments mixing young children running a year of
Speaker 2: their grade six education in the middle of a care
Speaker 2: facility in Saskatoon, which breaks all the rules. You see,
Speaker 2: the modern risk aversion culture doesn't make that possible. So
Speaker 2: it takes a great deal of innovation and work even
Speaker 2: to start an experiment like that. Well, once you see
Speaker 2: those experiments in action, as we've done, even through COVID,
Speaker 2: they've enriched the lives of the children, and clearly for
Speaker 2: the elders who have a chance to pass on their
Speaker 2: wisdom as well as echo the laughs of the children.
Speaker 2: It gives them a reason for living, not what otherwise
Speaker 2: might be on what they would see on their screens,
Speaker 2: reasons for dying. So to open doors for connection rather
Speaker 2: than closed doors for presumed safety is absolutely fundamental, and
Speaker 2: I'm afraid in most institutions, in most countries, even the
Speaker 2: top countries, it's going in the wrong direction. So the
Speaker 2: risk prevention culture has to be entirely rethought because what
Speaker 2: the world needs is more open doors, not more closed doors.
Speaker 2: And so we have to permit people to meet un
Speaker 2: till they meet and till they greet, until they learn
Speaker 2: to trust. They won't learn common cause they won't turn
Speaker 2: the me versus you into the bigger we and the US,
Speaker 2: and that's what's critical in any successful society. So that's
Speaker 2: something I think that is an agenda item for countries,
Speaker 2: even if they're pretty well now in the rankings, that
Speaker 2: they could be doing a better job at making sure
Speaker 2: these connection doors are open and cherished.
Speaker 1: I love this. It fits so much with some of
Speaker 1: the work that we've talked about on the show with
Speaker 1: Robert Putnam and others about the kind of importance of
Speaker 1: building these opportunities for building more of the social capital too.
Speaker 1: So I think sometimes when people see these rankings, especially
Speaker 1: if you're from a country that's pretty low on the list,
Speaker 1: it can feel, you know, kind of like a hit.
Speaker 1: You know, it can feel a little depressing. Are there
Speaker 1: things that countries that are lower on the list can
Speaker 1: do to maybe boost their rankings? You know? Should you
Speaker 1: feel so pessimistic?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, some people say because they immigrants in Finland are
Speaker 2: the happiest immigrants in the world, then everybody should move
Speaker 2: to Helsinki. That's absolutely what it's not about in a way,
Speaker 2: and sort of forget your ranking, but learn from the
Speaker 2: report what makes for a good life, and so much
Speaker 2: of it is so local, starting with your family, your friends,
Speaker 2: your colleagues at work and school. You can change your
Speaker 2: life in important ways, but the really important thing is
Speaker 2: to change other people's lives. So if you reach out
Speaker 2: to help others, that'll help you as well. But the
Speaker 2: ripples of that, this spillover effects of positive actions, of
Speaker 2: positive connections are very strong. If anything, they're stronger than
Speaker 2: the negative ones. That's to be cherished. What that means
Speaker 2: is everybody's got the option, both collectively as a country
Speaker 2: and a government, but also individually, and so for people
Speaker 2: who are pessimistic, they can't immediately turn around their main
Speaker 2: government policies, but they can turn around their neighborhoods. They
Speaker 2: can turn around what's going on in their workplace. They
Speaker 2: can turn around what's going on in their school by thinking,
Speaker 2: not complaining, not by making making angry demonstrations about something,
Speaker 2: but by building common costs to find better ways of
Speaker 2: doing things. So it's not about fighting, it's not about
Speaker 2: demanding your rights. It's about working together with the others
Speaker 2: you're living with in order to ver something better. And
Speaker 2: that's always an option. We see it after natural disasters.
Speaker 2: Why can't we see it after other less damaging but
Speaker 2: perhaps more corrosive things.
Speaker 1: What a great message of hope to end on. No
Speaker 1: matter where your country is on the World Happiness Report rankings,
Speaker 1: you can still do something in your home, or on
Speaker 1: your street, or in your workplace to help move your
Speaker 1: fellow citizens up the happiness chart. John and I have
Speaker 1: already talked about the generational splits his team has observed
Speaker 1: in country level rankings, but this year's report devotes a
Speaker 1: lot of time to age differences in happiness. In fact,
Speaker 1: there are whole chapters on well being trends in the
Speaker 1: young and the old this year, and so those are
Speaker 1: the two challenges we'll be tackling next in this special
Speaker 1: season about the World Happiness Report on the Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: with me Doctor Lauriy Santos