Happiest Countries in the World | Global Finance

Comparing one person's level of happiness to another's is problematic, given how, by its very nature, reported happiness is subjective. Comparing happiness across cultures is even more complicated. Researchers in the field of "happiness economics" have been exploring possible methods of measuring happiness both individually and across cultures and have found that cross-sections of large data samples across nations and time demonstrate patterns in the determinates of happiness.

Although the formal study of "happiness of nations" is relative new, the concept goes back far. Indeed, "the pursuit of happiness" was one of the rights argued for in the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, along with "life" and "liberty."

Three studies of the "happiness of nations" come from the Happy Planet Index (HPI), the World Database of Happiness (WDH) and the Global Projection of Subjective Well-being (GPSWB) from the University of Leicester.

  • Happy Planet Index (HPI) reflects the average years of happy life produced by a given society, nation or group of nations, per unit of planetary resources consumed. Put another way, it represents the efficiency with which countries convert the earth's finite resources into well being experienced by their citizens. The Global HPI incorporates three separate indicators:

  o Ecological footprint (the amount of land required to provide for all their resource requirements plus the amount of vegetated land required to sequester (absorb) all their CO2 emissions and the CO2 emissions embodied in the products they consume.),
  o Life satisfaction (health as well as "subjective well-being" components such as a sense of individual vitality, opportunities to undertake meaningful, engaging activities, inner resources that help one cope when things go wrong, close relationships with friends and family, belonging to a wider community)
  o Life expectancy.

Conceptually the HPI is an efficiency measure: well-being delivered per unit of environmental impact.

  • World Database of Happiness (WDH) uses the word "happiness" in the sense of subjective enjoyment of life – the degree to which an individual judges the overall quality of his life-as-a-whole favorably. Within this concept there are two components of happiness:

  o Hedonic level of affect (the degree to which pleasant affect dominates) and
  o Contentment (perceived realization of wants).
These components represent respectively "affective" and "cognitive" appraisals of life and are seen to figure as subtotals in the overall evaluation of life, called overall happiness. Happiness when defined this way can be measured by means of questioning, and hedonic level also by observations of non-verbal behavior.

• Subjective well-being (SWB) studies are self-reported happiness studies and are a more recent focus of current research. They attempt to show the average happiness in nations based on surveys in which respondents answer a variety of subjective questions. One popular measure of SWB is the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), developed in 1993 by Pavot & Diener, which formed part of the basis for the Global Projection of Subjective Well-Being report.

In all SWB studies – and in rankings that have an SWB component, there is a distinction drawn between brief emotional episodes – periods of joy or acute happiness – and an underlying state of happiness. The underlying state is defined as a sense of satisfaction with one's life, both in general as well as in such specific areas as relationships, health and work. Criticisms of self-reported happiness studies point out that temporary mood states can influence a participant's responses to questions in a subjective well-being survey, as can long-term changes to an individual's circumstances. Research seems to indicate that temporary moods have a marginal effect on SWB, while the longer-term and situational factors (such as financial well being and having basic needs – healthcare, education and housing – met) can have a more substantial effect. Indeed, data from SWB studies correlate strongly with health, wealth and access to education.

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