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U.S. No Longer Ranks Among 20 Happiest Countries
- 082349872349872 3y agoIIUC, largely because of being surpassed by eastern europe.
- Sparkyte 3y agospace race for happiness?
- flohofwoe 3y agoThere's not many Eastern European countries in the list (as in "former Eastern Bloc"), I can only see Czechia and Lithunia towards the bottom of the top 20. I would put Finland into the Northern Europe bucket, and only Lithunia had climbed one spot from 20 in 2023 to 19 in 2024.
- 082349872349872 3y agoAlso Slovenia, but eastern europe as a whole (even if the rest did not surpass) has been improving according to the report; I had been trying to spin it optimistically for the US as being less a decline there than improvement elsewhere in the world... https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/worldhappiness/viz/2024Draft/Figure2_1 https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/worldhappiness/viz/20... EDIT: here's 2023: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/worldhappinessreport/viz/WorldHappinessReport2023/Figure2_1 https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/worldhappinessreport/... {'czechia', 'slovenia', 'kuwait', 'united kingdom', 'costa rica', 'united arab emirates', 'lithuania', 'belgium'} which I'd group as: eastern europe CZ LT SI oil middle east AE KW western europe BE latin america CR airstrip one UK
- helij 3y agoLooking at the map and by my own knowledge I think Slovenia is not eastern but central europe.
- doktrin 3y agoI understand it's largely a cultural and historically rooted designation moreso than a purely geographic one, but it is mildly amusing that Czechia is often colloquially classed as being in "Eastern Europe" while the same is never true of Austria.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- joecool1029 3y agohttps://archive.is/VRaEO https://archive.is/VRaEO (doesn't have full article)
- test1235 3y ago>https://archive.is/VRaEO https://archive.is/VRaEO that doesn't work? I only see half a page there.
- CalRobert 3y agoUnpaywalled reporting from a more international perspective at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/20/young-people-becoming-less-happy-than-older-generations-research-shows https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/20/young-people... . There are several front-page stories about youth happiness on the guardian today. This struck me: """ It was the hush that worried the US’s top doctor as he toured the country’s university campuses last year. Dr Vivek Murthy went to places including Duke, University of Texas and Arizona State, but so many youngsters were plugged into earphones and gazing into laptops and phones that it was incredibly quiet in the communal areas. Where was the loud chatter Murthy remembered from his college days? """ from https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/mar/20/vivek-murthy-us-surgeon-general-social-media-youth-happiness https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/mar/20/vivek-murthy-u...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- NeoTar 3y agoI'm not saying that I disagree, but this strikes me as a "Things are different from my youth and are therefore bad" style comment (on behalf of the article author, not the commentator).
- mr_world 3y agoAs a 20 something recent grad, he isn't wrong
- CalRobert 3y agoWell, there's two parts to that. Things are different, which I think is fair, and people are talking to each other less, which I guess is subjective but feels bad to me. I'm glad I went to college before smartphones existed, and Facebook really was just a place to put dumb photos from parties and poke each other.
- sva_ 3y agoDamn people work on their laptops while at university? That's crazy news Next he'll go into a library and find that people are silently staring into books
- louthy 3y agoThe list… World’s 20 Happiest Countries In 2024: Finland Denmark Iceland Sweden Israel Netherlands Norway Luxembourg Switzerland Australia New Zealand Costa Rica Kuwait Austria Canada Belgium Ireland Czechia Lithuania United Kingdom
- test1235 3y agoSame news from CNN: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/worlds-happiest-countries-2024-wellness/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/travel/worlds-happiest-countries-202... 1. Finland 2. Denmark 3. Iceland 4. Sweden 5. Israel 6. Netherlands 7. Norway 8. Luxembourg 9. Switzerland 10. Australia 11. New Zealand 12. Costa Rica 13. Kuwait 14. Austria 15. Canada 16. Belgium 17. Ireland 18. Czechia 19. Lithuania 20. United Kingdom
- Simon_ORourke 3y agoIsrael at number five? Go figure?
- maratc 3y agoThis has been researched, the ultra-religious population (with the traditional clothing, very large amount of children, not much of an income) are regularly reporting high levels of happiness.
- Simon_ORourke 3y agoWith the rest of Israeli society subsidizing their lifestyle choices. Fine, go be as religious as you like but don't force me to pay for it!
- jbenjoseph 3y agoDriven especially by having the second most happiest youth. For one, Israel is an advanced country with mostly sunny weather. But the edge in my opinion is military/service culture produces a sense of self-actualization in the youth that is lacking in much of the West. Religion also makes people happy, and Israel is a pretty religious country.
- lucianbr 3y agoReligion also gives people a somewhat higher than average chance of being murdered by people of a different religion. At least, that's how it seems to be in Israel / Palestine and actually that whole area. I guess some people around there die happy, believing it is for a good cause, so there's no contradiction, at least not from their point of view. I'd still rather take Norway or New Zealand.
- tarkin2 3y agoThis is a democratic worry: unhappy people are pliable people and are more likely to vote for demagogues, demagogues who are more a wrecking ball than a manager of state.
- drewcoo 3y ago> "unhappy people are pliable people and are more likely to vote for demagogues, demagogues who are more a wrecking ball than a manager of state" That's a stilted and verbose euphemism for "voting against the status quo." Isn't that expected when people are allowed to vote and when the status quo fails them? > This is a democratic worry No, not being allowed to vote for change shows that democracy is absent.
- skhunted 3y agoThe concern is not that people want change or that they vote for change per se but that the change comes in the form of a person or persons who destroy the freedom to vote for change. This is more likely to happen during times of discontent. Falling happiness ought to be a concern for any political system that seeks to enhance the society.
- zo1 3y agoYou say that as a bad thing, others see it as a good thing. Like with everything, we eventually revert to a happy and "flowing" medium. People being unhappy means their needs and worries were not being catered.
- doubloon 3y agoBetween the homeless camps, the thousand yard stare retail workers, the perpetually angry boomer ruling class, the isolating physical environments, the destruction of third spaces, the medical bankruptcies, the lack of any kind of sick leave or vacation, the death race daily commutes, i thought this was pretty obvious
- fxtentacle 3y agoYou forgot the lack of affordable housing, which is my guess as to why youth happiness fell so sharply in the US and Germany and France.
- aredox 3y agoAmericans may finally start to realize they are not "temporarily embarrassed millionaires"
- 082349872349872 3y agoIf you look at the "Explained By Six Factors" sections: 2023: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/worldhappinessreport/viz/WorldHappinessReport2023/Figure2_1 https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/worldhappinessreport/... 2024: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/worldhappiness/viz/2024Draft/Figure2_1 https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/worldhappiness/viz/20... it appears that the biggest change for the US has been in the "dystopia + residual" factor, which implies to me that americans indeed reported closer to the model prediction in 2024 than in 2023.
- emchammer 3y agoPipe down, let's not get HN cancelled by act of Congress.
- oldpersonintx 3y ago[dead]
- stuaxo 3y agoUp next: lots of articles about how happiness isn't that important anyway.
- pastacacioepepe 3y ago[dead]
- TMWNN 3y agoUntil November of this year, at which time Trump's forthcoming inauguration will retroactively be deemed the cause of why the US dipped in the happiness ranking earlier in the year
- flybrand 3y agoThe dog that’s not barking is state by state data from the US, or from within parts of other large nations.
- Mortiffer 3y agoDirect link https://happiness-report.s3.amazonaws.com/2024/WHR+24.pdf https://happiness-report.s3.amazonaws.com/2024/WHR+24.pdf
- nickd2001 3y agoAs a Brit who lived in the US a few years so maybe has a detached perspective.. I saw Americans being happy in a land of opportunity with high personal freedom, opportunity to reinvent yourself, the great outdoors etc, and certainly I enjoyed that too. OTOH, individualism has its dark side. When people believe its all about self-determination and the state shouldn't be helping people, some people fall massively through the cracks e:g someone on low income while they try to look after a disabled family member. Americans are often generous at helping each other, in fact ironically I found those that supported economically right-wing "everyone should pull themselves up by their bootstraps" ideology, could often be simultaneously generous to others that they perceived to be in need. I think a source of unhappiness in the USA might be loneliness. To be honest, reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little house on the prairie" series, while that sounds idyllic in a way, it also sounds lonely and hard work to me. So, some sources of lower happiness in the USA in terms of lack of community, might be deep-rooted? (some off the top of my head thoughts which others may dispute :). )
- beardyw 3y agoThat doesn't account for why things have got worse.
- nickd2001 3y agoBut has it actually got worse? ;) I mean, yes in recent times, according to the methodology used by these academics, specifically relative to other countries. But that's pretty specific. As others said, maybe other countries have improved relatively? What's the take-away form all this? To me, loneliness is the biggest issue. We can all deal with a lot of cr*p in our lives if we've got supportive friends, and we can all be much happier by helping others who need it . Its very satisfying.
- Jensson 3y ago> But has it actually got worse? US life expectancy is going down, so yeah some things really are getting worse. Life expectancy is going up in almost all other countries.
- czam 3y agoRecently learned about the existence of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) https://weall.org/ https://weall.org/
- openrisk 3y agoCountless metrics have been proposed over time to track wellbeing of some type. The recent WISE initiative [1] tries to put some structure around this (using current welfare, future welfare and inclusiveness as key dimensions). Despite this lack of sharpness and unassailable objectivity, the signal sent by all these metrics is generally real: the focus on aggregate economic performance (the infamous GDP) and organizing society entirely around the maximization of monetarily defined wealth is too simplistic, no longer fit-for-purpose (if it ever was) and potentially a complete cul-de-sac. The list of "happy" countries is more or less the set where various intangible cultural aspects partially mitigate the growing inadequacy of the mainstream socioeconomic apparatus. But it is not a blueprint that can be easily adopted or improved upon by other countries and cultures. Yet there are no visible paths to workable alternatives (or complements) to the existing system. The simplicity of mapping everything onto a single monetary dimension has been such a successful monopoly and created incredibly strongly entrenched interests. It has left effectively no room for evolving any other broad-based economic infrastructure or tools that might expand what we optimize for to things that evidently matter. People are frustrated and compile this or that index or meta-index but the expression "put money where your mouth is" neatly expresses the current impasse. Happy happiness day! [2] [1] https://www.beyond-gdp.world/wise-database/wise-metrics https://www.beyond-gdp.world/wise-database/wise-metrics [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Day_of_Happiness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Day_of_Happiness
- maratc 3y agoWhatever metrics anyone comes up with today, cannot be scaled back historically. If e.g. you put some metric around "do you have a car", and try to use that metric towards "happiness", this implicitly puts all the people in 19th century in the "unhappy by not having a car" category. The only thing that can be used over time is the self-reported level of happiness. I.e. "on a scale of 1 to 5, how happy do you feel today?". And this is exactly what this study does. The real issue is that GDP (a concept which is too complicated to be understood by general populace), or any other "economic performance" criterion, have little to no relation to the self-perceived happiness of the population. Objectively poor people can be happy, and objectively rich people can be unhappy.
- hathym 3y agomy brain hit a buffer overflow at position 5 and I stopped reading.