17 ms·

World Happiness Report, 2019

94 points by eoinmurray92 8y ago

temptemptemp111 8y ago
Anyone who has been to over 10 countries or so should see... This is hilariously wrong! I've lived in Scandinavia, Asia, Europe, etc... Denmark is the happiest by a lot? Hilarious!
rdudekul 8y ago
Here is the full report: https://s3.amazonaws.com/happiness-report/2019/WHR19.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/happiness-report/2019/WHR19.pdf
Leary 8y ago
The World Happiness Report numbers are based only on the Cantril ladder. I don't get why they don't use an average of the Cantril ladder, positive affect, and negative affect. The Cantril ladder asks respondents the following question: "Please imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?" Is this what people typically associate with "happiness"? This is more like "life satisfaction" to me. [1] [1]https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/who-happiest-people-world-jon-clifton https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/who-happiest-people-world-jon...
- snambi 8y ago
  These are just timepass surveys. Also it depends on who they ask the question to.
- eoinmurray92 8y ago
  I think you are right, but these studies are still generally interesting I think the dynamics between GDP per capita, GINI and happiness/satisfaction are pretty interesting
  - ghda 8y ago
    If the “happiness/satisfaction” metric is rubbish though, then all the correlations are fairly meaningless, and are of interest only to the extent that they do or do not back up one’s own political opinions. Applying this scale cross-culturally, you just wind up measuring some weird convolution between actual subjective well-being and some kind of “what range of values is it culturally acceptable to answer this personal question about my wellbeing from a stranger with?” effect.
- WhompingWindows 8y ago
  My question is: how temporary is happiness? Is it an emotion or a personality trait or a mixture of the two? Considering some hypotheticals: Is it possible to both be living your best 10/10 life and be unhappy at times? Is it possible to be living your worst 0/10 life and be happy at times? If happiness is an emotion, then it is by its nature fleeting and you couldn't maintain a 10/10 or 0/10 happiness as your biochemistry/environment changes constantly, indeed much faster than you'd change the ladder-steps of Cantril. If happiness is more of a personality trait, a semi-permanent descriptor, then it seems more closely associated with the Cantril ladder and life satisfaction. Personally, I believe happiness results from genetic, short, and long term causes. Every person has a genetic baseline happiness proclivity, then a medium-term multiplier based on their life circumstances (job, relationships, meaning, etc), then a short-term mood-multiplier (I'm happier exercising, playing music, etc. than sitting in traffic or filing paperwork).
- amelius 8y ago
  Perhaps they used this question in previous surveys, and they can't change the question because it would complicate the interpretation of time-series data (?)
- YokoZar 8y ago
  I worry about the phrase "possible" in there. If you're in a place with no opportunity, you may genuinely believe that the best possible life for you isn't a very good one, and thus rate yourself near the top even though you're unhappy.
- mikekchar 8y ago
  Thank you for that! The results make so much more sense to me now. I've lived in Canada, the US, the UK and Japan. One of the reasons I choose to remain in Japan is that people seem a lot happier here. This is in complete contrast with the results (which ranks Canada up near the top). I'm Canadian and while this is a completely subjective point of view, one of the things I don't like about living there is that people seem perpetually pissed off about one thing or another. The world is just wrong. It's all going to hell in a hand basket. It shouldn't be like this. You can't have a conversation on any topic without people complaining about one thing or another (perhaps it's just the people I hung out with :-) ). In Japan, people seem happy with their lot. However, it would be completely ingenuous to say that they think they have life easy. They've got stupid bosses and long hours and really low pay and nothing they can do about it other than to go to the enkai, drink a lot and hope that their stupid boss remembers the drunken rant that will save the company. Women and children barely see the father in the family except on public holidays. If women work, they have to put in stupid hours and also do all the house work. Children have lots of stress because your entire career is practically mapped out when you take your entrance exam for high school. If you goofed off when you were 14 or 15, then cut your salary in half for the rest of your life. But the big difference is that they don't complain about it. It's all "Yeah, it's difficult, but what are you going to do? You can only do your best" and soldier on. And I think that's a common theme in Asia. In the west people seem to act like spoiled brats in comparison -- always in a funk about something, even though by comparison they have it dramatically better than anybody else in the world. But the key thing is that people in the west do actually realise that they have it pretty good and are very proud of it. While in Asia people are embarrassed about their situation even though they have accepted it. Anyway, the above contained a lot of very general (and basically outrageous) statements. It was not meant to constrain anyone based on where they are from or what culture they enjoy. I was simply trying to communicate my prejudices and why I was left scratching my head at this report.
  - dkural 8y ago
    Based on your paragraph on children never seeing their fathers etc. Japan does seem terrible - perhaps Canadians, underneath all that complaining, are in fact happier; whereas Japanese don't complain but suffer silently? The scores may in fact be accurate..
nemo1618 8y ago
Interesting that GINI coefficient doesn't seem to be correlated with happiness (except in Europe, for some reason). Reminds me of Taleb's assertion that people don't resent the rich simply for being rich, they resent rich people who have no skin in the game. Perhaps rich Europeans are perceived as having less skin in the game?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- eoinmurray92 8y ago
  I think increasing GINI might be correlated with GDP growth in most countries (including, Europe, but much let so). So increasing GINI would correlate with increasing happiness, until you hit the GDP per capita ceiling, and then it becomes anti-correlated.
- KyleOS 8y ago
  I thought the same - that inequality isn't having more of an effect on happiness. It seems that the 3 strongest predictors are actually GDP per cap, social support and the freedom to make life choices.
- badpun 8y ago
  The idea that people resent inequality always seemed incredibly sketchy to me. Imagine a super-wealthy country where 99% of population has a yearly income of $200k, and the 1% has an income of $200m. This society would be very unequal, and yet somehow I can't imagine the 99% there being resentful of the rich, voting for populists etc. So, I think that people resent the rich only if they themselves are struggling to get by - but, as soon as their needs would be met, they would stop caring about other people's bank accounts.
  - b_tterc_p 8y ago
    You’re describing it as income differences of 1000x. Right now it’s more like 25x although the 1% does hold about 90% of the existing wealth. The problem is that this kind of thing can’t last long. For many reasons. Affording things means you can pay for the materials, labor, and markup that went into it. If everyone makes $200k, you can’t afford labor costs for anything produced domestically. You can import foreign workers, but then you’ve broken the constraints of the system and suddenly people are poor.
seltzered_ 8y ago
Related, I've been fascinated by this plot of 'social thresholds achieved' at the cost of 'biophysical boundaries transgressed' - https://goodlife.leeds.ac.uk https://goodlife.leeds.ac.uk . I find it a more level-headed analysis to frame arguments around what resource usage it takes to be a 'happy' country, rather than just aggregating various happiness metrics alone. "No country in the world currently meets the basic needs of its citizens at a globally sustainable level of resource use." (summary article: https://theconversation.com/is-it-possible-for-everyone-to-live-a-good-life-within-our-planets-limits-91421 https://theconversation.com/is-it-possible-for-everyone-to-l... )
leowoo91 8y ago
How about the hedonic trademill?
- KyleOS 8y ago
  Doesn't that relate only to life changes or specific events, so that shouldn't apply no? The report looks at relatively constant factors in peoples' lives, such as social support GDP per capita, corruption, life expectancy (unless you move), etc. Maybe I'm wrong?
dawhizkid 8y ago
I feel like I’ve always led myself astray trying to pursue happiness. Meaning & purpose seem to give me more “contentment” than optimizing my life for constant ecstasy-like highs.
- brm 8y ago
  You may be leading yourself astray by improperly defining happiness...
eoinmurray92 8y ago
https://kyso.io/eoin/world-happiness-gdp-per-capita-scaled https://kyso.io/eoin/world-happiness-gdp-per-capita-scaled I forked OP's study and graphed out how Happiness vs GINI looks when you scale the markers by GDP per capita, there is a clear trend of increasing happiness with increasing GINI, but it snaps back for the highest GDP per capita countries (disclaimer - I founded Kyso - the company these studies are hosted on)
mattigames 8y ago
There have been 2 million immigrants from Venezuela to Colombia last 4 years escaping from lack of food, money, toilet paper among many other issues but despite that this data shows Venezuela to be happier than Colombia; it doesn't add up; maybe the people wrongly assumed the quiz was a government initiative and decided to save face saying they are happy.
- acdanger 8y ago
  maybe the unhappy ones are those who left the country.
  - mattigames 8y ago
    No, with the record-breaking 2.30 million percent inflation almost nobody is happy there.
    - chrisco255 8y ago
      Not to mention water and food shortages...
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
- cambalache 8y ago
  Tu no eres venezolano pana por eso escribes sin saber. Tipico de este sitio por cierto.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - mattigames 8y ago
    No I'm not Venezuelan, but I have talked with many and when I ask them if the situation is as bad as TV says they tell me is even worse; there isn't a single day I don't cross paths with a homeless Venezuelan asking for money here in Colombia.
sgune 8y ago
There was a recent video by VICE/VOX on Finland where it was noticed that people didn't look visibly happy but were more satisfied with their life. To that effect, I am interested to read some study on, like a satisfaction index.
pzone 8y ago
Is this using the correct data? The happiness measure for the US of 7.28 seems to be the 2008 value. The 2018 Cantril score according to the report was 6.88.
ccarpenterg 8y ago
The visualization is good, IMHO there's a lot of room for improvement though. There's a big issue which undermines the credibility of the whole report: - Venezuela has a Cantril Ladder value of 6.2577. That's very strange to say the least, and it's hard to believe to be honest. Venezuelans are one of the most unhappy, miserable people in the world.
- return0 8y ago
  to be clear, is that first-hand experience from venezuela or some other survey?
  - chrisco255 8y ago
    They lack the basic necessities on Maslow's hierarchy of needs right now, with the state of their ruined economy.
    - return0 8y ago
      yes but happiness perception is subjective and depends on what information they get
- ccarpenterg 8y ago
  I took a quick look at the full report (linked in the comments), and I think the data shown in the visualization might not be 100% accurate.
  - pzone 8y ago
    I think they're using data from 2008.
pcurve 8y ago
Not sure if anyone saw this... "Is Finland Really The Happiest Country In The World? (HBO)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FPU4F-Ajh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FPU4F-Ajh8
7373737373 8y ago
I wonder in what month the survey itself was answered. Because if it was in the spring, I wouldn't be surprised if the Finns were above average happy at that time. The harsh winter will sure lead to a more extreme sine-wave like happiness pattern than in other countries. Other problems may involve social signaling, because the Gallup world poll, on which this report is based, is conducted via telephone.
blunte 8y ago
Obviously the poor people in the US were too busy working multiple jobs and riding the bus to vote.
marcus_holmes 8y ago
Interesting that Australia is so high up, while SE Asia so low. My experience of both (specifically Cambodia) is exactly the reverse. But I suspect the cultural factors are at play here. Ask an Aussie if they're living the best life and they'll say yes, proud in their Lucky Country and the best beaches in the world (whichever city an Aussie inhabits has the "best beaches in the world"). While in Cambodia they're more humble. Obviously this is to certain extent about poverty. But it's also about the cultural tendency against boasting. And an acknowledgement that life isn't perfect, there are things that need to change and improve. Yet, in my experience, obviously a limited sample of anecdata, the average Cambodian is happier, quick to find the joy in life, with strong supportive family connections. While Aussies are comparing ourselves to each other, disconnected from our families, suiciding in record numbers, and angry at the world.
- chadcmulligan 8y ago
  I'm guessing you live in sydney :-)
  - marcus_holmes 8y ago
    Perth... but I see the same everywhere. Currently in Port Macquarie and the same strange subdued anger is here.
- aaron695 8y ago
  Seeing both, this isn't true. Cambodia has a much higher suicide rate than Australia. Money is happiness. It's only the ultra rich who think otherwise. Seeing kids die at the rate they do in Cambodia is going to make them unhappy. I find it strange people think other wise. Almost no parents will get to send their kids to an ok university. Many can't even send them to the finish of school. > strong supportive family connections. This isn't as true as you think. They must socially look this way, but it often doesn't play out that way. With more money this might however help with happiness... But equally societies with more money might move away from this model because it's very toxic at times. And talk to them about the fact they are under a virtual dictatorship.... They have something great, but without money, they get more of the horrors of life thrust upon them.
shmed 8y ago
Surprising that the US consider themselves to have better social support than Canada and many other european countries.
nydel 8y ago
we're likely all aware this is an incredibly difficult thing to quantify; indeed this represents a respectable effort. it's not that i am not interested in raw data over interpretation. usually we don't have access to such data, or we don't know exactly what said data should be. so this to me is a sort of data pornography that i enjoy with a grain of ky jelly.
JohnClark1337 8y ago
The grass is always greener on the other side of the nuclear reactor

94 points by eoinmurray92 8y ago

Anyone who has been to over 10 countries or so should see... This is hilariously wrong! I've lived in Scandinavia, Asia, Europe, etc... Denmark is the happiest by a lot? Hilarious!

rdudekul 8y ago

Here is the full report: https://s3.amazonaws.com/happiness-report/2019/WHR19.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/happiness-report/2019/WHR19.pdf

Leary 8y ago

The World Happiness Report numbers are based only on the Cantril ladder. I don't get why they don't use an average of the Cantril ladder, positive affect, and negative affect. The Cantril ladder asks respondents the following question: "Please imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?" Is this what people typically associate with "happiness"? This is more like "life satisfaction" to me. [1] [1]https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/who-happiest-people-world-jon-clifton https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/who-happiest-people-world-jon...

snambi 8y ago
These are just timepass surveys. Also it depends on who they ask the question to.
eoinmurray92 8y ago
I think you are right, but these studies are still generally interesting I think the dynamics between GDP per capita, GINI and happiness/satisfaction are pretty interesting
- ghda 8y ago
  If the “happiness/satisfaction” metric is rubbish though, then all the correlations are fairly meaningless, and are of interest only to the extent that they do or do not back up one’s own political opinions. Applying this scale cross-culturally, you just wind up measuring some weird convolution between actual subjective well-being and some kind of “what range of values is it culturally acceptable to answer this personal question about my wellbeing from a stranger with?” effect.
WhompingWindows 8y ago
My question is: how temporary is happiness? Is it an emotion or a personality trait or a mixture of the two? Considering some hypotheticals: Is it possible to both be living your best 10/10 life and be unhappy at times? Is it possible to be living your worst 0/10 life and be happy at times? If happiness is an emotion, then it is by its nature fleeting and you couldn't maintain a 10/10 or 0/10 happiness as your biochemistry/environment changes constantly, indeed much faster than you'd change the ladder-steps of Cantril. If happiness is more of a personality trait, a semi-permanent descriptor, then it seems more closely associated with the Cantril ladder and life satisfaction. Personally, I believe happiness results from genetic, short, and long term causes. Every person has a genetic baseline happiness proclivity, then a medium-term multiplier based on their life circumstances (job, relationships, meaning, etc), then a short-term mood-multiplier (I'm happier exercising, playing music, etc. than sitting in traffic or filing paperwork).
amelius 8y ago
Perhaps they used this question in previous surveys, and they can't change the question because it would complicate the interpretation of time-series data (?)
YokoZar 8y ago
I worry about the phrase "possible" in there. If you're in a place with no opportunity, you may genuinely believe that the best possible life for you isn't a very good one, and thus rate yourself near the top even though you're unhappy.
mikekchar 8y ago
Thank you for that! The results make so much more sense to me now. I've lived in Canada, the US, the UK and Japan. One of the reasons I choose to remain in Japan is that people seem a lot happier here. This is in complete contrast with the results (which ranks Canada up near the top). I'm Canadian and while this is a completely subjective point of view, one of the things I don't like about living there is that people seem perpetually pissed off about one thing or another. The world is just wrong. It's all going to hell in a hand basket. It shouldn't be like this. You can't have a conversation on any topic without people complaining about one thing or another (perhaps it's just the people I hung out with :-) ). In Japan, people seem happy with their lot. However, it would be completely ingenuous to say that they think they have life easy. They've got stupid bosses and long hours and really low pay and nothing they can do about it other than to go to the enkai, drink a lot and hope that their stupid boss remembers the drunken rant that will save the company. Women and children barely see the father in the family except on public holidays. If women work, they have to put in stupid hours and also do all the house work. Children have lots of stress because your entire career is practically mapped out when you take your entrance exam for high school. If you goofed off when you were 14 or 15, then cut your salary in half for the rest of your life. But the big difference is that they don't complain about it. It's all "Yeah, it's difficult, but what are you going to do? You can only do your best" and soldier on. And I think that's a common theme in Asia. In the west people seem to act like spoiled brats in comparison -- always in a funk about something, even though by comparison they have it dramatically better than anybody else in the world. But the key thing is that people in the west do actually realise that they have it pretty good and are very proud of it. While in Asia people are embarrassed about their situation even though they have accepted it. Anyway, the above contained a lot of very general (and basically outrageous) statements. It was not meant to constrain anyone based on where they are from or what culture they enjoy. I was simply trying to communicate my prejudices and why I was left scratching my head at this report.
- dkural 8y ago
  Based on your paragraph on children never seeing their fathers etc. Japan does seem terrible - perhaps Canadians, underneath all that complaining, are in fact happier; whereas Japanese don't complain but suffer silently? The scores may in fact be accurate..

nemo1618 8y ago

Interesting that GINI coefficient doesn't seem to be correlated with happiness (except in Europe, for some reason). Reminds me of Taleb's assertion that people don't resent the rich simply for being rich, they resent rich people who have no skin in the game. Perhaps rich Europeans are perceived as having less skin in the game?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
eoinmurray92 8y ago
I think increasing GINI might be correlated with GDP growth in most countries (including, Europe, but much let so). So increasing GINI would correlate with increasing happiness, until you hit the GDP per capita ceiling, and then it becomes anti-correlated.
KyleOS 8y ago
I thought the same - that inequality isn't having more of an effect on happiness. It seems that the 3 strongest predictors are actually GDP per cap, social support and the freedom to make life choices.
badpun 8y ago
The idea that people resent inequality always seemed incredibly sketchy to me. Imagine a super-wealthy country where 99% of population has a yearly income of $200k, and the 1% has an income of $200m. This society would be very unequal, and yet somehow I can't imagine the 99% there being resentful of the rich, voting for populists etc. So, I think that people resent the rich only if they themselves are struggling to get by - but, as soon as their needs would be met, they would stop caring about other people's bank accounts.
- b_tterc_p 8y ago
  You’re describing it as income differences of 1000x. Right now it’s more like 25x although the 1% does hold about 90% of the existing wealth. The problem is that this kind of thing can’t last long. For many reasons. Affording things means you can pay for the materials, labor, and markup that went into it. If everyone makes $200k, you can’t afford labor costs for anything produced domestically. You can import foreign workers, but then you’ve broken the constraints of the system and suddenly people are poor.

seltzered_ 8y ago

Related, I've been fascinated by this plot of 'social thresholds achieved' at the cost of 'biophysical boundaries transgressed' - https://goodlife.leeds.ac.uk https://goodlife.leeds.ac.uk . I find it a more level-headed analysis to frame arguments around what resource usage it takes to be a 'happy' country, rather than just aggregating various happiness metrics alone. "No country in the world currently meets the basic needs of its citizens at a globally sustainable level of resource use." (summary article: https://theconversation.com/is-it-possible-for-everyone-to-live-a-good-life-within-our-planets-limits-91421 https://theconversation.com/is-it-possible-for-everyone-to-l... )

leowoo91 8y ago

How about the hedonic trademill?

KyleOS 8y ago
Doesn't that relate only to life changes or specific events, so that shouldn't apply no? The report looks at relatively constant factors in peoples' lives, such as social support GDP per capita, corruption, life expectancy (unless you move), etc. Maybe I'm wrong?

dawhizkid 8y ago

I feel like I’ve always led myself astray trying to pursue happiness. Meaning & purpose seem to give me more “contentment” than optimizing my life for constant ecstasy-like highs.

brm 8y ago
You may be leading yourself astray by improperly defining happiness...

eoinmurray92 8y ago

https://kyso.io/eoin/world-happiness-gdp-per-capita-scaled https://kyso.io/eoin/world-happiness-gdp-per-capita-scaled I forked OP's study and graphed out how Happiness vs GINI looks when you scale the markers by GDP per capita, there is a clear trend of increasing happiness with increasing GINI, but it snaps back for the highest GDP per capita countries (disclaimer - I founded Kyso - the company these studies are hosted on)

mattigames 8y ago

There have been 2 million immigrants from Venezuela to Colombia last 4 years escaping from lack of food, money, toilet paper among many other issues but despite that this data shows Venezuela to be happier than Colombia; it doesn't add up; maybe the people wrongly assumed the quiz was a government initiative and decided to save face saying they are happy.

acdanger 8y ago
maybe the unhappy ones are those who left the country.
- mattigames 8y ago
  No, with the record-breaking 2.30 million percent inflation almost nobody is happy there.
  - chrisco255 8y ago
    Not to mention water and food shortages...
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
cambalache 8y ago
Tu no eres venezolano pana por eso escribes sin saber. Tipico de este sitio por cierto.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- mattigames 8y ago
  No I'm not Venezuelan, but I have talked with many and when I ask them if the situation is as bad as TV says they tell me is even worse; there isn't a single day I don't cross paths with a homeless Venezuelan asking for money here in Colombia.

sgune 8y ago

There was a recent video by VICE/VOX on Finland where it was noticed that people didn't look visibly happy but were more satisfied with their life. To that effect, I am interested to read some study on, like a satisfaction index.

pzone 8y ago

Is this using the correct data? The happiness measure for the US of 7.28 seems to be the 2008 value. The 2018 Cantril score according to the report was 6.88.

ccarpenterg 8y ago

The visualization is good, IMHO there's a lot of room for improvement though. There's a big issue which undermines the credibility of the whole report: - Venezuela has a Cantril Ladder value of 6.2577. That's very strange to say the least, and it's hard to believe to be honest. Venezuelans are one of the most unhappy, miserable people in the world.

return0 8y ago
to be clear, is that first-hand experience from venezuela or some other survey?
- chrisco255 8y ago
  They lack the basic necessities on Maslow's hierarchy of needs right now, with the state of their ruined economy.
  - return0 8y ago
    yes but happiness perception is subjective and depends on what information they get
ccarpenterg 8y ago
I took a quick look at the full report (linked in the comments), and I think the data shown in the visualization might not be 100% accurate.
- pzone 8y ago
  I think they're using data from 2008.

pcurve 8y ago

Not sure if anyone saw this... "Is Finland Really The Happiest Country In The World? (HBO)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FPU4F-Ajh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FPU4F-Ajh8

7373737373 8y ago

I wonder in what month the survey itself was answered. Because if it was in the spring, I wouldn't be surprised if the Finns were above average happy at that time. The harsh winter will sure lead to a more extreme sine-wave like happiness pattern than in other countries. Other problems may involve social signaling, because the Gallup world poll, on which this report is based, is conducted via telephone.

blunte 8y ago

Obviously the poor people in the US were too busy working multiple jobs and riding the bus to vote.

marcus_holmes 8y ago

Interesting that Australia is so high up, while SE Asia so low. My experience of both (specifically Cambodia) is exactly the reverse. But I suspect the cultural factors are at play here. Ask an Aussie if they're living the best life and they'll say yes, proud in their Lucky Country and the best beaches in the world (whichever city an Aussie inhabits has the "best beaches in the world"). While in Cambodia they're more humble. Obviously this is to certain extent about poverty. But it's also about the cultural tendency against boasting. And an acknowledgement that life isn't perfect, there are things that need to change and improve. Yet, in my experience, obviously a limited sample of anecdata, the average Cambodian is happier, quick to find the joy in life, with strong supportive family connections. While Aussies are comparing ourselves to each other, disconnected from our families, suiciding in record numbers, and angry at the world.

chadcmulligan 8y ago
I'm guessing you live in sydney :-)
- marcus_holmes 8y ago
  Perth... but I see the same everywhere. Currently in Port Macquarie and the same strange subdued anger is here.
aaron695 8y ago
Seeing both, this isn't true. Cambodia has a much higher suicide rate than Australia. Money is happiness. It's only the ultra rich who think otherwise. Seeing kids die at the rate they do in Cambodia is going to make them unhappy. I find it strange people think other wise. Almost no parents will get to send their kids to an ok university. Many can't even send them to the finish of school. > strong supportive family connections. This isn't as true as you think. They must socially look this way, but it often doesn't play out that way. With more money this might however help with happiness... But equally societies with more money might move away from this model because it's very toxic at times. And talk to them about the fact they are under a virtual dictatorship.... They have something great, but without money, they get more of the horrors of life thrust upon them.

shmed 8y ago

Surprising that the US consider themselves to have better social support than Canada and many other european countries.

nydel 8y ago

we're likely all aware this is an incredibly difficult thing to quantify; indeed this represents a respectable effort. it's not that i am not interested in raw data over interpretation. usually we don't have access to such data, or we don't know exactly what said data should be. so this to me is a sort of data pornography that i enjoy with a grain of ky jelly.

JohnClark1337 8y ago

The grass is always greener on the other side of the nuclear reactor