UN Releases 2024 Global Happiness Index Report

What is happiness? I believe that many people are unable to define this common feeling. Everyone who tries to define “happiness” realizes that people around the world have different perceptions of happiness in different races, cultures, societies and times. However, the United Nations still tries to compare the happiness of people in different countries.

The International Day of Happiness is celebrated on March 20 every year. On that day, the United Nations releases the 2024 Global Happiness Index Report. The UN has been publishing this report since 2012 in order to promote the UN’s goal of sustainable development. The annual report is based on data from Gallup, a US-based market research company, and the results are analyzed by a global team led by the University of Oxford. This year, Finland topped the list for the seventh time with an average score of 7.7, followed by Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Israel in second to fifth place. The last two countries are Lebanon and Afghanistan with 2.7 and 1.7 points respectively.

From this report, it can be seen that the study is based on the Western society’s understanding of happiness, and the results may not be applicable to other cultures. However, we can still compare the lives of people in different countries in terms of what constitutes “happiness”.

How are the world’s happy countries rated?

This is the 12th year of the release of the United Nations World Happiness Report. Every year, the United Nations invites the people of 143 countries to assess their own well-being according to the Gallup World Poll, which is the world’s most comprehensive and wide-ranging public opinion survey, and it ranks the well-being of more than 100 countries and regions around the world in terms of their per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP), expected life expectancy, and corruption perception. The report ranks more than 100 countries and regions around the world in terms of their per capita GDP, expected healthy life expectancy and corruption perception.

Specifically, respondents were invited to complete a series of self-assessments to rate their happiness on the Cantril Scale. The scale is essentially a self-fulfillment scale, with the top of the scale (representing a score of 10) meaning the happiest, and the bottom of the scale (i.e. 0) meaning the least happy. Due to the unstable nature of single-year data, since 2013, international comparisons have been made using the average results of the last three years.

In addition, the report measures and investigates a number of factors that may be associated with people’s self-reported happiness, the six most important of which are “GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and corruption”. The results of the report synthesize the above surveys based on the average ratings completed by people in each country over a three-year period in terms of their assessment of their own quality of life. It is important to note that since the rankings are based on the answers people provide when taking the survey, they do not necessarily take into account the latest current events or recent changes.

The latest World Happiness Report 2024 again shows that the Nordic countries have the edge. Of course, many people in Scandinavian countries, such as Finland, do not agree with this result.The Finns are typically a tough and self-restrained people who do not show their anger and joy. If we were to rank them on the basis of their expression of joy and anger, the Finns would not rank very high – they are very different from the Latin Americans in this respect, for example, the Latin Americans as a whole are very rich in emotional expression. For the Finns, happiness is a measured, balanced, and uncomplaining life. In other words, the Finns feel that it is better to say that they are content than to say that they are happy. It would be more accurate to say that the Finns are the least unhappy people in the world. They are very good at minimizing the factors that make people unhappy and turning their wealth into social well-being.

Looking at Asia, Singapore is Asia’s ‘happiest country’ for the second year running, ranking 30th globally, Taiwan is Asia’s second happiest country, ranking 31st, Japan and South Korea rank 51st and 52nd respectively, and China ranks 60th, with Hong Kong dropping four places from last year to 86th, down from 72nd place in Russia. China was ranked ninth in Asia, while Myanmar, Cambodia, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh were among the unhappiest countries in Asia, and India, the world’s most populous country, was ranked 126th out of 143.

Australia ranks 10th in the world in terms of happiness, while New Zealand ranks 11th. It is believed that these two countries have been at the top for a long time because of their small populations, rich resources, stability and welfare, which has made Australia an immigrant’s paradise, and a lot of New Zealanders have also settled in Australia. It is hard to understand why the population of New Zealand cannot increase despite the fact that it is not inferior to Australia in all aspects. Is it because it is too cold for immigrants to move in?

It is expected that Hong Kong people feel the least happy in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. At present, Hong Kong’s economy is in the doldrums, and social freedom and grievances towards the government are obvious, and I believe they will not change in the near future. Taiwan’s happiness is close to Singapore’s. I believe this has nothing to do with the rapid development of Taiwan’s economy in recent years, as well as the rapid rise of the stock market and the increase in national wealth. On the other hand, Mainland China has entered into an economic dilemma, and is under the pressure of the western society and the collapse of the property market. I believe that the situation will not be improved in the near future.

The United States of America, considered as the most advanced country in the world, is ranked 23rd, which is not low, but reflects that its citizens have not fully realized the development of the United States today. Perhaps it is due to the economic policies of the U.S. that have led to the inequality between the rich and the poor, and the inability of the lower class to make a living.

Apart from Europe, inequality in happiness has also increased globally. Happiness inequality is most pronounced among the elderly and in sub-Saharan Africa. These results reflect differences in income, education, health care, social acceptance and support within households, communities and countries.

Happiness among young people is on the decline

In the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, happiness has been declining in recent years across all age groups, especially among younger people. In fact, young people are currently the unhappiest age group in the world, according to data for the period 2021-2023. However, Australia’s youth happiness ranking has risen slightly by two places from last year, and only this year has the overall happiness index squeezed into the top 10 globally.

The average life assessment of the world’s under-30s declines significantly with age, often in a U-shaped pattern of lower life satisfaction in mid-life; this is now the case in more than half of Asia and Africa, with Hong Kong ranking 97th in terms of young people’s happiness globally, and in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, young people are twice as unhappy as older people. Young people in these four countries are experiencing a worrying trend towards a ‘mid-life crisis’, and young women are more unhappy than young men.

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, a professor of economics at the University of Oxford who edited the report, told the media that young people are experiencing a midlife crisis today, especially in North America. In the United States, young people are not as happy as older people, which has led to a decline in the U.S. rankings. If we look at the elderly group alone, the U.S. ranks 10th in the world, but young people in the U.S. rank 62nd in terms of happiness. New Zealand has a similar problem. New Zealand ranks sixth in the world when looking at the over-60s group alone, but 27th in terms of the well-being of its young people. By contrast, many of the biggest improvements in well-being have been in the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Unlike in wealthier countries, young people there report a significantly higher quality of life than older groups, often equal to or better than in Western Europe.

In addition, the negative impact of social platforms, polarized social debates, disparities between the rich and the poor, and the difficulty of getting ahead are all factors that contribute to the decline in young people’s happiness. Meanwhile, as people age, they tend to remember the positive aspects of their lives more than the negative ones. This may help explain why life evaluations rise with age.

What is Happiness?

“The establishment of the International Day of Happiness is indeed a major step forward for human civilization, as it makes it clear that happiness is the ‘spiritual home shared by all human beings’, i.e. ‘common happiness’. “Common Happiness” is the common value of mankind. Since the pursuit of happiness is a fundamental goal of human beings, and happiness and well-being are common goals and expectations in the lives of human beings all over the world, what exactly is happiness? When most people are suddenly confronted with the question, “Are you happy? most people are more or less at a loss for words when they are suddenly confronted with the question “Are you happy? What is happiness? It’s a question that comes up a lot, and everyone has a different answer.

The global quest for happiness did not just start a decade or so ago. For thousands of years, human beings have never given up thinking about happiness, searching for happiness, defining happiness, and envisioning happiness. Especially after the Enlightenment era, Enlightenment thinkers who pursued rationality, humanism, science, and progress regarded happiness as a goal that all people can pursue in this life, a right or even an obligation in this world. Since then, people have conceptualized happiness as an innate human ability, a goal that can be achieved by all men, women, and children.

In recent years, in the academic circle, besides psychologists, there are also brain scientists, clinicians, social scientists and economists involved in the study of happiness. Scientists also recognize that it is difficult to pinpoint happiness to a specific discipline, and that the study of happiness is necessarily an interdisciplinary one. Therefore, the definition of happiness is never a single constant. For example, Bhutan and Nepal are underdeveloped countries, and Bhutan’s economic level is among the lowest in South Asia and even in Asia, but it has always had a very high happiness index. In a sense, these countries have not yet entered the state of “consumer society” that everyone in the West knows. The pace of life there is slow, even crossing the street is slow, they do not have the concept of over-consumption, they do not have mortgage loans, so naturally, their satisfaction with life is extraordinarily high. From this we can see that “happiness” can be a completely subjective concept.

One thing is for sure, an unhappy person who immigrates to a country with a stronger sense of happiness will not feel happier immediately. On the contrary, every immigrant will go through the stages of cultural change, losing friends and family who have been supporting them in their endeavors, re-establishing relationships in a country and adjusting their expectations in life when they first arrive in a country. These can be stressful and difficult, so many immigrants, especially those from wealthy countries, experience a decline in happiness during the adjustment period.

There is never a right answer to happiness, nor is there a perfect happiness. Trying to find perfect happiness is often counterproductive. John Stuart Mill once said that those who are truly happy are not actually concerned with their own happiness. They often find happiness by accident in the pursuit of other things. May we all stop dwelling on the question “Are you happy? Instead of dwelling on the question “Are you happy?”, let’s all feel good, be grateful for life, utilize our abilities, and experience different levels of happiness in the course of our actions.

Article/Editorial Department (Sameway Magazine)

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