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Happiness report: Norway is the happiest place on earth
- officelineback 10y agoI've always been borderline obsessed with Finland and Norway. It's easy to say the US should be more like them but they have the big advantage of being much smaller and MUCH more culturally homogeneous.
- vasira 10y agoIt is the most peaceful country in the world as well. To live and settle there is dream come true for many people.
- jjgreen 10y agoIt is a fine country, marred only by the difficulty in finding a decent curry.
- klausjensen 10y agoBest curry in Stavanger: http://www.tandoori.no/ http://www.tandoori.no/ My favorite restaurant in the area. :)
- arethuza 10y agoMaking a decent curry isn't that difficult so that's not really an excuse. :-)
- Vinkekatten 10y agoFood in Oslo has improved by leagues and bounds in the past ten years. You'll find it here if you know where to look :)
- acchow 10y agoPost hoc ergo propter hoc.... but they're also incredible wealthy. I'm not saying money can buy happiness, but it pretty much can.
- robinson-wall 10y agoMoney can't buy happiness... but not having to worry about money buys less stress.
- Yaggo 10y agoNorway and United States have very similar GDP per capita. The important difference is that in Nordic countries the money has been divided more equally.
- misja111 10y agoNorway's GDP per capita is quite a bit higher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)... Judging by the top entries in this list, GDP PP is a pretty good happiness predictor.
- matt4077 10y agoThere's some good data on this. I seem to remember happiness responding to income up to about $80k/year and the curve continuing rather flat above that sum.
- stagbeetle 10y agoFor anyone interested in the full report: https://s3.amazonaws.com/sdsn-whr2017/HR17_3-20-17.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/sdsn-whr2017/HR17_3-20-17.pdf The U.S is 14th.
- agentgt 10y agoI guess it is not a surprise that North Korea is missing from the list. I am just surprised they didn't mention that though in the report (via a quick command-f).
- ino 10y agoThere's an interesting interview where a North Korean refugee in South Korea says that the people in NK are happier than those in SK. It's in part 2 of the following series. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyqUw0WYwoc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyqUw0WYwoc (part 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhmzpMP3bEE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhmzpMP3bEE (part 2)
- mistermann 10y ago1. Norway 146. Yemen 2. Denmark 147. South Sudan 3. Iceland 148. Liberia 4. Switzerland 149. Guinea 5. Finland 150. Togo 6. Netherlands 151. Rwanda 7. Canada 152. Syria 8. New Zealand 153. Tanzania 9. Australia 154. Burundi 10. Sweden Will be interesting to see how spots 7, 8, 9 hold up going forward as many/most middle class people in these 3 countries increasingly find they cannot afford even a very modest home within reasonable commuting distance of work. For example: http://www.greaterfool.ca/2017/03/17/outta-here/ http://www.greaterfool.ca/2017/03/17/outta-here/ "My wife, daughter and myself currently live in Newmarket in a detached home that we purchased our home in late 2014 for $590,000 and it’s worth $1.1 million. That’s quite the profit in 2.5 years. So an option we are leaning towards is selling, and then renting for until we are ready to leave town and go north or east." If it was just single family homes in prime areas it might be understandable, but the "bubble", or whatever it is, is now creeping into rent, leaving nowhere to hide.
- sn41 10y agoI am an Indian who have lived for a while in NZ. Please do not chug on this Kool-Aid that NZ is not corrupt. Part of the reason why real estate in Auckland is overpriced is because the government deliberately does not formulate a legislation that forbids non-residents from buying up property. Please petition for this reasonable legislation. Who does the current policy enrich? It is your country. I think you should fight for it. Corruption comes in all shapes and sizes, and underhanded disenfranchisement is the insidious form it takes in NZ.
- mistermann 10y agoOh, as a Canadian I fully agree, the exact same thing happening to you is happening to us as well. In Vancouver, upper class neighborhoods hollowed out by empty unmaintained multi-million dollar homes, condo towers pitch black at night, high end sports cars with N (new driver) stickers, horrendous traffic as (speculation) it seems people can buy a driver's license without first learning how to drive, etc. Popular opinion is that eventually the bubble will pop, but unless China itself pops, I think their economy is so relatively large that "this time really is different", if you don't own by now you, and your offspring, really will be priced out forever. It's a depressing realization. As for fighting for your country.....as usual, it is the boomers who overwhelmingly own property, and it is boomers who show up at the polls on election day. Voters love making 10% to 30% tax free on their massively leveraged investments, they'll never vote for any policy that would threaten that.
- mi_noi_noi 10y agoI am Norwegian and wonder how much of this is cultural. Most people here know that the rest of the world has much lower living standards. So for many it is perhaps rude or shameful to claim to be unhappy or dissatisfied. I know it says "subjective happiness" in the report, but I still suspect it might be an influence.
- officelineback 10y agoInteresting. And on the flip side, you have the law of Jante. Or is it OK to proclaim one's self as super happy? Maybe Jante is more about material success?
- tazjin 10y agoJanteloven is more about not assuming you are better than others. Being happy is perfectly compatible with that.
- klausjensen 10y agoI don't think that paints a very good picture of what Janteloven / Law of Jante is. In many other cultures, success is celebrated. Janteloven is the opposite of that, ensuring that success is criticized an seen as undeserved or lucky. I find it to be one of the worst aspects of Scandinavian culture, which is full of other good things, that I love.
- olavk 10y agoThe Law of Jante is not about success as such, and not really about criticizing success either. It is a law that says you should not pretend you are better than your peers. If success makes you act as if you are actually better than other people (bragging, acting arrogant, or just publicly suggesting that you actually deserve the success) you are met with disapproval. But the disapproval is not towards the success itself, but towards acting differently because of it.
- nabla9 10y agoThat's what you get when you combine oil riches, Nordic model and coastline designed by Slartibartfast.
- harryh 10y agoHow does the coastline help? I've never heard this explanation before.
- matt4077 10y agoIt may actually have a bit of truth in it: The fractal coastline allows for many more coastline properties than the straight coasts of, say, South Africa.
- pvdebbe 10y agoThe coastline is required to make a nice-ish reference to THHGTTG.
- erelde 10y agoAka more simply as H2G2, "the" and "to" aren't required in an acronym.
- doc_gunthrop 10y agoExcept nobody ever refers to it as "H2G2". Using acronyms already adds some degree of ambiguity; shortening a commonly used acronym makes it basically unrecognizable, even when used within the proper context.
- asavadatti 10y agoH2G2 is a pretty common acronym. In fact I've only heard it referred to as H2G2 or Hitchhiker's Guide.
- erelde 10y ago
- nkrisc 10y agoAfter visiting Norway in the summer, the only thing that would give me pause with regards to living there is the winter. I live at 41°N right now and I think winter has to much darkness. Imagining the opposite of the Norwegian summer I experienced is a bit much for me.
- Vinkekatten 10y agoI'll be honest, it's a little rough. Around late december, the darkest part of the year, I barely see sunlight for a month or two. I'm at work by 8:30, sun rises 10. I leave work at 16:00, sun sets 14:00. It gets better though, so by february the worst bit is over. It's not really that awful - you really get a physical sense of the year progressing, and in a sense the darkness is cozy. Lots of light in the cities, starry skies in the countryside. Get some solarium tan going and spend a week or two of vacation time in warmer parts of the world and it's not at all bad.
- talldan 10y agoIt's not too different in London, to be honest. In December the sun is only up at 8, during which time a lot of people are underground on the tube, and by 6 the sun has set again when we're doing the reverse journey.
- mstade 10y agoFor me as a Swede, January is the hardest month. November and December when it gets real dark aren't too bad, you have Christmas and all that to both literally (what with all the lights) and figuratively light everything up. But then January comes around, Christmas is over, the lights all or mostly come down in the first or second week, and you're a couple of months away from any kind of spring rearing its head, with nothing to keep you afloat in the meantime through all that darkness. I'm not gonna lie, it's tough. January is my least favorite month in the nordic countries. As soon as February comes around things start getting better though. There's optimism in the air that while it's still cold and snowy (possibly even colder than January) spring is just around the corner. There's also plenty of winter sports around February and early March, such as the Vasa race[1], which is always fun. Come April and May, when spring is in full force, the optimism reaches a fever pitch, culminating with midsummer eve in June. This is a huge part of the build up to the nordic summer, which is the most amazing thing you'll experience – in great contrast to the deep darkness of winter, the light simply never ends! If you're way up north, this is literal since the sun never actually sets. It's quite a sight. Still, I've lived in other parts of the world with different climates and I wouldn't trade the nordic climate for anything. Like you say, the physical sense of the year progressing is something special, and even to the point that I almost get depressed without it. Certainly, if I miss the nordic summer I'm gutted. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasaloppet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasaloppet
- cies 10y agoOf course the outcomes of this kind of research are largely dependent on way it is designed. There is a similar study that finds Latin American countries to be among the happiest. Discussed here: http://www.livescience.com/50209-happiest-countries-latin-america.html http://www.livescience.com/50209-happiest-countries-latin-am...
- TeeWEE 10y agoExactly what I thought, in some cultures asking somebody if they are happy on a 10 scale ladder, will result in high values because the culture's norm is to be positive. While in some other countries the social norm is to be pessimistic. But in the end those pessimistic countries wouldn't be a good place to be happy anyways :p
- dragonwriter 10y agoNo, it's not about pessimism optimism. I some cultures (often, on the same country), people rate very high even if they have a moderately negative opinion because anything but the very highest available ratings is seen as saying "unacceptably bad", while in other cultures they tend to rate low even with a moderately positive opinion because high ratings are seen as, well, high praise. It's not pessimism vs. optimism, it's that numeric ratings have no intrinsic, universal mapping to feelings, and cultures tend to map them differently.
- jernfrost 10y agoAs someone living in Norway who has been quite interested in the subject and read a lot about it. My understanding is that nordic countries tend to come at the top, not because people are jumping around with joy in the streets. More likely to find that in South America or Africa. Nordic happiness is a mild happiness. It is really about having few people very dissatisfied with life rather than having super happy people. There is little of the social conflict, poverty, health problems etc which plague many other countries. That is what these things measure. Latin American countries would typically get pulled down because there is a signifiant portion of people who don't have very nice lives. This is what I've heard from foreigners living in northern Europe. They notice that there are very few people you observe who look genuinely dissatisfied with their life.
- gondo 10y agowhere can i find the full list? why is there no source mentioned/linked in the article?
- iak8god 10y agoThe "World Happiness Report" is mentioned by name twice in the article: http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2017/ http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2017/
- barking 10y agoDoes this explain why the Scandanavian countries are the number one preferred destination for refugees?
- kristofferR 10y agoWe're not that any longer. 2015 was crazy, so in 2016 the Scandinavian countries made it much stricter: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/7921609/3-16032017-BP-EN.pdf/e5fa98bb-5d9d-4297-9168-d07c67d1c9e1 http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/7921609/3-160... Page 4. First time asylum applicants declined with over 70% in all the Scandinavian countries.
- matt4077 10y agoBoth may be the result of similar policies, i. e. rather generous benefits for people in need. For residents, it contributes to happiness to know that getting cancer would not just be life-threatening, but may also cost you your job, house, and savings. For refugees, Scandinavia usually puts them up in modest apartments, provides a stipend in cash that covers necessities, and has a lot of programs to get them into work. The risk of your place going up in flames during the night is also a bit lower than elsewhere. Other countries put refugees into rather filthy mass shelters, with just rows and rows of a hundred cots to sleep and instead of cash there's catering bought for $1 per meal.
- barking 10y ago>Other countries put refugees into rather filthy mass shelters, with just rows and rows of a hundred cots to sleep and instead of cash there's catering bought for $1 per meal. Which countries do that?
- matt4077 10y agoGermany, in some jurisdictions to varying degrees. The shelters were/are mostly temporary because there just wasn't room for a million Syrians in 2015.
- jernfrost 10y ago
- zdean 10y agoI wonder if the lack of ethnic diversity in the "happier" countries is a contributing factor: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/16/a-revealing-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-ethnically-diverse-countries/?utm_term=.d5df93ee526b https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/16...
- microcolonel 10y agoCanada seems to be second from the top in that scale (though I have no idea how you would choose the scale for a chart of "ethnic diversity"), and only 7th from the top of this "happiness survey". I don't think either dataset is gathered reliably, but if you're looking at a correlation there, there are glaring exceptions. As somebody who lives in Canada, I think cultural compatibility is important, but ethnic homogeneity is unnecessary. Ethnicities are generally a proxy for cultures, Canada has a great deal of success in separating the two, though the prime minister doesn't seem to get it. Anyway, not a hard-and-fast opinion, but I think ethnicity is a weak bond, and probably should be.
- prodikl 10y agoi doubt it. japan and south korea are pretty homogeneous and they have some of the highest suicide rates in the world
- avar 10y agoThat would be an argument against it being the sole factor, but has little to do with whether it's a contributing factor.
- known 10y agoTrue as per Putnam http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/ http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/t...
- fergie 10y agoOther people have mentioned Japan, but you could look at basically any eastern european state to see lots of ethnically pure, yet miserable populations. EDIT: those countries are getting better, but still...
- victornomad 10y agoI find these studies so biased. Asking questions trying to figure out how positive a person is, its just a bit non sense without taking into account culture. Im from south Europe where in my opinion we are quite happy, but at the same time we love to complain. Its just cultural, it doesnt mean that we hate our lifes, we just like to be negative some times :) I lived as well in a few countries of that list and I cannot say they are happier. I think they act happier. Answering a "How are you today?" question differs among countries In some countries people answer "awesome, and you?" and perhaps he/she just broke up with the couple. In some other countries you would answe "Man, I feel so unlucky and terrible" but actually you just won lottery but rather than a million you got few thousand euros :) just cultural... :)
- roesel 10y agoIs this "how happy are the people in the country" or rather "how happy the people in the country say they are"? :)
- openasocket 10y agoI'm wondering how this squares with the fact that Norway has the 13th highest suicide rate in the world (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/suiciderate.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/suiciderate.html). I know that suicide is often the product of mental illness rather than general unhappiness, but clearly Norway has a large number of people with some sort of depressive disorder, which I figured would lower them in terms of general unhappiness. In fact, most of the countries in the top 10 of this list have very high suicide rates... EDIT: I'm an idiot, Norway actually has a rather low suicide rate, please disregard.
- elastic_church 10y agoPerhaps there is another perspective on killing yourself that isnt in the pejorative? Just a thought
- Someone1234 10y agoYou claim that they have the "13th highest suicide rate in the world." Do you have a source for that claim? The linked table only contains 26 countries out of 196 countries in the world; so you cannot conclude what you conclude based on that table alone. PS - What I find interesting about that table is, countries where it is socially acceptable to complain (and to "be sad") there is less suicide than in countries where the expectation is to be positive/happy all the time. Just kind of the inverse of what you'd expect, the UK having a low suicide rate is hilarious given how self-deprecating of a society we are.
- openasocket 10y agoWow, I feel really dumb right now. I didn't bother scrolling down on that page and didn't realize how short that list was! Looking at the wikipedia page it's clear that Norway has a much lower suicide rate in comparison to the rest of the world.
- senior_james 10y agoMost of the time, people that have more freedom are less happy. I remember stories I heard about people moving from Soviet Russia to the United States back in the early 80s. They were unhappy and stressed out because in the soviet union, they were assigned a job and the government took care of them. Here in the United States, you had to fend for yourself. Freedom isn't always pleasant and happy, but it's better for the future of humanity. I've been all over the world and don't know anywhere that has as much freedom as the US.
- elastic_church 10y agoAny particular state in mind?
- freehunter 10y agoIn general most states in the US are very similar to each other in terms of laws. There are some newsworthy exceptions, but in most people's day-to-day lives, basically every state is going to be the same with regards to laws and freedoms. The biggest difference you'll see is different cultures, but a culture doesn't tend to define itself by the state. Most cultures in the US are centered around geographical region (West Cost, Deep South, Midwest, etc) and even then vary wildly based on the city you're in (Buffalo is very different from NYC, Sacramento is very different from San Fransisco, Portland is very different from Eugene, etc).
- overcast 10y agoIt's called the Paradox of Choice. More choice/freedom, means people are less happy, because they are constantly trying to maximize purchases/life. Ends up just making you miserable.
- TillE 10y ago"Freedom" is completely orthogonal to having to worry about basic needs. You can guarantee every citizen's basic comfortable survival, and still have a great deal of personal freedom and even a market economy. It just means moderately high taxes and the government owning a lot of capital. The world's post-industrial history is extremely short, and everything we've seen thus far is some kind of historical accident. Other futures are always possible.
- dewyatt 10y agoInteresting similarities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
- miguelrochefort 10y agoMust be all those Teslas...
- fergie 10y agoNot so much happy as smug.
- anothercomment 10y agoOne of the most depressing things I ever read is about Norwegians not having good ideas for spending their money, so the tend to opt for buying second and third holiday homes. I mean I am sure having holiday homes provides a certain degree of happiness, it was just the mundaneness and banality of the human condition that depressed me about it.
- olavk 10y agoIf you have experienced the nature in Norway, you will understand having holiday cottages is a nice way to spend money.
- anothercomment 10y agoOne or two, yes - but three? As I said, for sure it provides some happiness. But the lack of ideas is simply depressing. A similarly depressing thing I read is about people in Second Life simply recreating the houses they dream about in real life, despite having infinite possibilities.
- exodust 10y agoThe house you dream about in real life will be more interesting to build in 3D than a gimmicky "infinite" house. There is a sense of real architectural visualization work going on. The process of constructing your dream house in 3D gives you a new way to see the house outside of your own mind.
- digi_owl 10y agoIt is likely a bit more nuanced than that. Likely for most families you do not need to go back many generations to find a farmers origin. For those it was not unusual to have some kind of cabin in the hills (4 walls and a roof, not much more than to keep the weather at bay) used for hunting and such. So the idea of having a cabin to retreat to is ingrained. In recent years though it seems to have taken on a bit of a caricature of itself as monied interests have taken to build clusters of "cabins" that are as well equipped as full on houses and selling them. You may liken it to tract housing. And most of these are not bought with straight up money, but debt. One thing to note is that most of the top entries on the happiness list also are up top on the list of household debt, where housing and similar loans make up a big part. Most of the nations, Norway included, is likely to have their own variant of a "subprime crisis" sooner rather than later.
- krystiangw 10y agoNorway is great country to live. And IT jobs salaries are almost as good as in US ~ $100k https://jobsquery.it/jobs;page=1;tags=;sortBy=SALARY_DESC;query=;location=Norway https://jobsquery.it/jobs;page=1;tags=;sortBy=SALARY_DESC;qu...
- marvin 10y agoNorwegian developer salaries are not nearly at US levels. Been improving the last few years though. In the biggest cities, they might be competitive with some large-ish cities in the US.
- mrtri 10y agorecord rapes http://norwaytoday.info/news/record-high-number-rapes-bergen-oslo/ http://norwaytoday.info/news/record-high-number-rapes-bergen...
- flamtap 10y agoWhat is your point?
- unionjack22 10y agoBrown people and immigrants. He's just threading the conversation without being explicit about his intentions.
- Allower 10y agowhite people are the happiest on earth. hallelujah
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- synicalx 10y ago> It is your country. I think you should fight for it. Uh oh, those words are verboten on HN! You mustn't like your country nor should you ever do anything that benefits it because that's racist.
- sn41 10y agoWhich is why I prefixed a sentence saying that I am not a citizen of NZ. Despite that, I feel sad for the people in the country who believe that the economic system must not be questioned even when it is clearly working against them. When the housing prices are clearly out of the pockets of the average earner in a country, it is just economic fanaticism to not do something about it. In the US, I've heard that you can be eligible for a home-loan for up to 3 times your annual earning (someone can correct me if I'm wrong on this.) This gives a quantitative measure. Take the number of houses which are priced more than 3 times the median earning of a neighborhood. If too many of these houses are owned by foreigners who are not residents, then legislation is called for. I know it's not free market economics, but I do not believe in needless misery.
- dang 10y agoPlease don't make things up about HN for rhetorical purposes. Also, please don't post unsubstantive comments. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13913656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13913656 and marked it off-topic.
- synicalx 10y agoSo you're telling me there's absolutely no evidence of widespread anti-nationalist sentiment on this site? Completely unheard of?