World Happiness
World Happiness
A Mappy Look at the 2017 UN World Happiness Report
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Each year, the United Nations' Sustainable Development Solutions Network releases the results of a survey of the state of global "happiness." This World Happiness Report ranks 155 countries by their self-reported sense of well being.
What is happiness? Can the happiness of a nation be measured? If so, what does that look like? It starts by asking people to imagine a ladder...
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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?
The average response from each of the 155 nations, ranges from only two-and-a-half steps up the ladder of happiness, all the way to seven-and-a-half steps up.
Jordan, Hungary, and Serbia personify the average national happiness, placing themselves at around 5.4 steps up the ladder.
The people of Norway, on average, placed themselves 7.5 steps up the ladder –the highest of all. Norway was followed closely by fellow Nordic nations Denmark (last year’s top spot), Iceland, Switzerland, and Finland.
Meanwhile, the folks of the Central African Republic placed themselves lowest, at just 2.7 steps up the ladder.
Their sense of dissatisfaction was shared by the people of Burundi, Tanzania, Syria, and Rwanda.
This map displays all 155 nations, by their happiness ranking and colored by high, average, or low scores.
Feel free to explore the map for regional patterns...
Central and Northern European nations enjoy many of the top-ranked levels of happiness. The Americas claim many of the other happiest rankings, with Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the UAE, and Israel also placing highly.
Sub-Saharan Africa is home to the lion's share of unhappy nations. Other non-African nations that place themselves on the lower rungs of the happiness ladder have been subjected to conflict or natural disasters.
Given what we know about all of these nations, is there a way to ask ourselves what might be some of the driving forces behind a person's, and, on average, their nation's, sense of happiness?
Sort of. If we run a ton of already-known national measures through a statistics robot, it can tell us to what extent it thinks each contributes to the happiness score. Here are the six key categories thought to explain the variations in happiness scores across the 155 nations...
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Income | Specifically, the log of the per-capita GDP. Income has a virtuous, or vicious, impact on all of the following factors, but is, in itself, a strong indicator of a person's sense of well-being.
A sense of trust in businesses and government | There is mounting evidence that economic performance and growth are tied to higher levels of trust within the social framework.
The expectation of good health | There is a long-standing pile of research showing a strong relationship between the expectation of a healthy life and a sense of happiness. This is likely tied to better access to health care, better health behaviors, and better nutrition.
A personal network of social support | Social support has been shown to have a strong linkage to happiness. Having someone, or a network of someones, to count on in a time of need has a large impact on a person's sense of, and actual, well-being.
The perception of freedom | When folks are satisfied with their level of freedom to choose what to do with their lives, this personal liberty is a marked by an improvement to the social fabric.
Giving and generosity | Research has found that when people are benevolent and altruistic, characterized by giving money for a charitable purpose (beyond whatever self-interest they might expect in return), they tend to feel happier.
Residuals | This is a statistical sponge that soaks up the myriad unknowable things that contribute to a person's sense of well-being, as well as accounts for an inevitable overlap in the impacts of the above factors. In other words, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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How can we visualize these key factors at a national level, on a map, where we can explore geographic trends? One way is to make a completely crazy multivariate scaled Wheel of Happiness...
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The six key categories that tend to explain happiness scores.
SCALE
Each ring is scaled by the volume of happiness that it "explains," compared to other countries.
FOR EXAMPLE
How far up that ladder does each category take you, compared to other nations? Here are some sample Wheels of Happiness...
Let's try this out on an actual map...
Nordic nations are perennially the happiest. In fact, the top ten happiest countries are the same as last year, with minor shuffling.
The United States comes in at #14. The reported sense of happiness has reduced, due likely to an increased mistrust of political and business authority figures in recent years.
Central and South America is characterized by moderate levels of happiness. Comparatively mistrustful of authority, and light on charitable giving, these nations do, however, enjoy rather robust personal support systems.
Generally, folks benefit from comparatively outstanding supportive relationships, but are strongly suspicious of business and political leadership.
Sub-Saharan Africa is home to a vast majority of the least happy nations, including the very least happy, the Central African Republic.
Compared, though, to the other drivers of happiness, having a reliable network of people to depend on rates pretty highly.
Expectations of healthy living are pervasively low compared to other nations...
...particularly compared to Western Europe, where expectations of health are sky-high.
The nations of Southeast Asia show remarkable variation in both their overall sense of happiness, and across the variables that might explain that happiness.
Trust in figures of authority is particularly varied in this region.
The proportion of Burmese people that give to charity is relatively high. It is estimated that this giving accounts for almost one full rung on their ladder of happiness -the most of any nation.
Other nations with comparably high amounts of happiness derived from charitable giving are Indonesia, Malta, Thailand, and New Zealand.
Nations at the bottom of that list are Greece, Lithuania, China, Morocco, and the Gabon.
Nations in Southeastern Europe show a consistent trend of a relatively average influence of Income, Health, and Social Support, but comparatively low levels of Trust, Freedom, and Giving.
These regionally wealthy oil exporting nations enjoy high levels of perceived freedom and trust in authority. Charitable giving, on balance, is lower.
Happiness is a hard thing to pin down. You can ask someone how far they are up on the happiness ladder, but then how do you explain what might push them up those rungs? I'm amazed at the sheer volume of information that the UN team pushed through their statistical robot to determine these six key explainers. And I'm always amazed at the additional dimensions of understanding that come with visualizing something geographically -especially something as intrinsically geographic as this.
I hope you found some insights and found yourself asking your own questions as we explored this map. What's more, I hope you think critically about new or better ways of presenting information like this. In the end, the maps we make are just tools to do right by a phenomenon, to give it some structure that might whisper into the ear of another person.
I had fun puzzling over ways to present this phenomenon, and I'm pretty happy with the Wheel of Happiness. Stay tuned for a more nerdy dive into how to make these things, what about them works, and what they aren't so good at. Until then...
Happy Mapping! John
Created with Story Map Cascade
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Garden Tree Photograph
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Cover Fjord Photograph
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UN World Happiness Report 2017
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2017 Happiness Scores and Key "Explainer" Factors
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Go to the Web Map used in this Story
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