Day 4 — World Happiness Report
Happiness — is that feeling that comes over you when you know life is good and you can’t help but smile. It’s the opposite of sadness. Happiness is a sense of well-being, joy, or contentment. When people are successful, or safe, or lucky, they feel happiness.
The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness that ranks 156 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be.
The rankings are based on answers to the main life evaluation question asked…
It asks respondents to think of a ladder, with the best possible life for them being a 10, and the worst possible life being a 0.
They are then asked to rate their own current lives on that 0 to 10 scale.
The sub-bars show the estimated extent to which each of six factors contribute to making life evaluations higher in each country —
- levels of GDP
- life expectancy
- generosity
- social support
- freedom
- corruption .
The sub-bars have no impact on the total score reported for each country, but instead are just a way of explaining for each country the implications of the model estimated in Table 2.1. People often ask why some countries rank higher than others — the sub-bars (including the residuals, which show what is not explained) are an attempt to provide an answer to that question.
Jeffery Sachs — Economist and Professor at Columbia University and the Co-editor of the World Happiness report. He says: “The happiest countreis need a balance of life, you don’t have to get super rich to be happy”.
Finland and Denmark have consistently came in the high ranks of the leaderboards for the United Nations’ Happiness Index. In 2019 the World Happiness Report named Finland the happiest country to live in, a title that they have kept from 2018. The UK placed 15th. The top 3 countries were Finland, Denmark and Norway while the bottom 3 were Afghanistan, South Sudan and the Central African Republic. A trend is observed to occur with Nordic countries including Norway, Iceland and Finland always finishing in the highest rankings. Moreover, Finland is seen to be one of the best countries to have babies, given its great and free health care. The government also offer generous parental leave and gift to help with the baby. The country also offers free education to all.
Although, there are higher taxes especially on income, the Nordic people are happy to pay these taxes due to the services they receive in return. The government also pays a major role in the people’s happiness. They support a lot of the citizen’s basic needs which majorly help people shape their lives. Due to this, there is much less poverty, injustice, crime and feeling of inequality.
