The World Happiness Report is an annual publication of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network which contains rankings of national happiness and analysis of the data from various perspectives. The World Happiness Report is edited by John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey Sachs. The 2017 edition added three associate editors; Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Haifang Huang, and Shun Wang. Authors of chapters include Richard Easterlin, Edward F. Diener, Martine Durand, Nicole Fortin, Jon Hall, Valerie Møller, and many others.
In July 2011, the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 65/309 Happiness: Towards a Holistic Definition of Development inviting member countries to measure the happiness of their people and to use the data to help guide public policy. On April 2, 2012, this was followed by the first UN High Level Meeting called Wellbeing and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm, which was chaired by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Prime Minister Jigme Thinley of Bhutan, a nation that adopted gross national happiness instead of gross domestic product as their main development indicator.
The first World Happiness Report was released on April 1, 2012 as a foundational text for the UN High Level Meeting: Well-being and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm, drawing international attention. The report outlined the state of world happiness, causes of happiness and misery, and policy implications highlighted by case studies. In 2013, the second World Happiness Report was issued, and since then has been issued on an annual basis with the exception of 2014. The report primarily uses data from the Gallup World Poll. Each annual report is available to the public to download on the World Happiness Report website.
In the reports, experts in fields including economics, psychology, survey analysis, and national statistics, describe how measurements of well-being can be used effectively to assess the progress of nations, and other topics. Each report is organized by chapters that delve deeper into issues relating to happiness, including mental illness, the objective benefits of happiness, the importance of ethics, policy implications, and links with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) approach to measuring subjective well-being and other international and national efforts.
As of March 2018, Finland was ranked the happiest country in the world.
Video World Happiness Report
Annual Report Topics
World Happiness Reports were issued in 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016 (an update), 2017 and 2018. In addition to ranking countries happiness and well-being levels, each report has contributing authors and most focus on a subject. The data used to rank countries in each report is drawn from the Gallup World Poll, as well as other sources such as the World Values Survey, in some of the reports. The Gallup World Poll questionnaire measures 14 areas within its core questions: (1) business & economic, (2) citizen engagement, (3) communications & technology, (4) diversity (social issues), (5) education & families, (6) emotions (well-being), (7) environment & energy, (8) food & shelter, (9) government and politics, (10) law & order (safety), (11) health, (12) religion and ethics, (13) transportation, and (14) work.
2018 World Happiness Report
The 2018 reiteration was released on 14 March and focused on the relation between happiness and migration. As per 2018 Happiness Report, Finland is the happiest country in the world, with Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and Switzerland holding the next top positions. The World Happiness Report 2018 ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels, and 117 countries by the happiness of their immigrants. The main focus of this year's report, in addition to its usual ranking of the levels and changes in happiness around the world, is on migration within and between countries. The overall rankings of country happiness are based on the pooled results from Gallup World Poll surveys from 2015-2017, and show both change and stability. Four countries have held the top spot in the last four reports: Denmark, Switzerland, Norway and now Finland. All the top countries tend to have high values for all six of the key variables that have been found to support well-being: income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust and generosity. Among the top countries, differences are small enough that year-to-year changes in the rankings are to be expected.
The analysis of happiness changes from 2008-2015 shows Togo as the biggest gainer, moving up 17 places in the overall rankings from 2015. The biggest loser is Venezuela, down 2.2 points. Five of the report's seven chapters deal primarily with migration, as summarized in Chapter 1. For both domestic and international migrants, the report studies the happiness of those migrants and their host communities, and also of those in the countryside or in the country of origin. The results are generally positive. Perhaps the most striking finding of the whole report is that a ranking of countries according to the happiness of their immigrant populations is almost exactly the same as for the rest of the population. The immigrant happiness rankings are based on the full span of Gallup data from 2005 to 2017, sufficient to have 117 countries with more than 100 immigrant respondents. The ten happiest countries in the overall rankings also make up ten of the top eleven spots in the ranking of immigrant happiness. Finland is at the top of both rankings in this report, with the happiest immigrants, and the happiest population in general. While convergence to local happiness levels is quite rapid, it is not complete, as there is a 'footprint' effect based on the happiness in each source country. This effect ranges from 10% to 25%. This footprint effect explains why immigrant happiness is less than that of the locals in the happiest countries, while being greater in the least happy countries.
2016 World Happiness Report (Update)
2015 World Happiness Report
2013 World Happiness Report
2012 World Happiness Report
Maps World Happiness Report
International rankings
Data is collected from people in over 150 countries. Each variable measured reveals a populated-weighted average score on a scale running from 0 to 10 that is tracked over time and compared against other countries. These variables currently include: real GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceptions of corruption. Each country is also compared against a hypothetical nation called Dystopia. Dystopia represents the lowest national averages for each key variable and is, along with residual error, used as a regression benchmark.
2018 report
As per the 2018 Happiness Index, Finland is the happiest country in the world. Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland hold the next top positions. The report was published on 14 March 2018 by UN. The full report can be read at 2018 Report. The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness. The World Happiness Report 2018, which ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels, and 117 countries by the happiness of their immigrants, was released on March 14th at a launch event at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican.
2017 report
The 2017 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2014-2016. For that timespan, Norway was the overall happiest country in the world, even though oil prices had dropped. Close behind were Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland in a tight pack. Four of the top five countries follow the Nordic model. All the top ten countries had high scores in the six categories. The ranked follow-on countries in the top ten are: Finland, the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Sweden.
Table of data for 2017:
2013-2015 averaged ranking
Criticism
Metrics
Some argue that questioning on overall life status leads humans to overweight income concerns, rather than happiness. For instance Colombia came 37th in the 2018 World Happiness Index but 1st by daily emotional experience. In 2012 "A Gallup survey on happiest countries had a completely different list [compared with the World Happiness Index], with Panama first, followed by Paraguay, El Salvador, and Venezuela". Similarly a Pew survey of 43 countries in 2014 (which excluded most of Europe) had Mexico, Israel and Venezuela finishing first, second and third.
Others point out that the ranking results are counterintuitive when it come to some dimensions, for "instance if rate of suicide is used as a metric for measuring unhappiness, (the opposite of happiness), then quite some of the countries which are ranked among the top 20 happiest countries in the world will also feature among the top 20 with the highest suicide rates in the world."
Methodology
From an econometric perspective, some statisticians argue the statistical methodology mentioned in the first world happiness report using 9 domains is unreliable.
Others argue that the World Happiness Report model uses a limited subset of indicators used by other models and does not use an Index function like peer econometric models such as Gross National Well-being Index 2005, Sustainable Society Index of 2008, OECD Better Life Index of 2011, and Bhutan Gross National Happiness Index of 2012, and Social Progress Index of 2013.
Other critics point out that Happiness Surveys are contradictory in Ranking because of the varying methodologies. They also argue that the surveys are inherently flawed. "No matter how carefully parsed the data may be, a survey based on unreliable answers isn't worth a lot."
Philosophical concerns
From a philosophical perspective, critics argue that measuring of happiness of a grouping of people is misleading because happiness is an individual matter. They state "the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, Tolstoy and several others, happiness is an individual choice that is independent of the society, its structures and enabling or dis-enabling conditions and not something to be measured using variables that can only capture a nation's well-being. This means therefore that one cannot really talk of a happy or unhappy nation, but of happy or unhappy individuals."
See also
Notes
References
External links
- Official website
- Sustainable Development Solutions Network
- The Guardian
- Map of changes of happiness index points in Europe between 2005 and 2016
Source of article : Wikipedia
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