alt Hacker NewsFYI: This world happiness report is entirely based on asking just one obtuse question, which does not even have the word happiness in the actual 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?
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It looks to me that this refers to a 272 page PDF report [0] on the theme "Happiness and Social Media" and the Executive summary explains that it is about much more than that simple question.
Pretty good question I would say. It’s rating your life on a scale of 1 to 10. That being said it doesn’t gauge actual happiness. For instance the Nordic countries have very high levels of depression with a third of the some countries being on antidepressants. As a whole I would say on a day to day basis people are much more ebullient and happy seeming in a lot of other places like the Mediterranean. I would wager that this doesn’t capture the percentage of time people are “happy”.
that's also why I much prefer the HDI (Human Development Index), it tracks more meaningful metrics:
Doesn't that almost imply the happiest countries in the world have a lack of imagination on what could be better? Or maybe they don't suffer from comparison (the thief of joy) as a culture.
Its hard to frame a question across languages and cultures.
The ladder metaphor isn't the worst.
I mean.. even if I was a bit worse off financially, if the leadership in the country was even borderline normal, I would give a much higher rating than currently.
Canada here. Feels like we're barely hanging on to rung 5 or 6 and about to fall to the bottom.
Quantifiable example: most recent jobs report we lost 100k+ full time jobs. Biggest job less since COVID. Or the fact our increase in GDP per capita is the (second?) worst in the OECD in the last 10 years. Worse than Japan, Italy, the UK and all the other laggards...
The Howtown channel had a video on this last year, 'One weird metric picks the world's "happiest country"':
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg1--c2r8HE
They link to their sources:
* https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vFO-3Sq5-rorCWBIKwuR-Spk...
Specifically the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale ("Cantril Ladder") is used:
* https://www.sciotoanalysis.com/news/2024/2/9/what-is-cantril...
* https://news.gallup.com/poll/122453/understanding-gallup-use...
It's been around since 1965, so it's presumably been studied a lot and the pros and cons of it explored in the literature.