The Happiness Index

I have chosen the perfect day to write about happiness because it’s another of those delightful early Spring days when the sun is shining, the sky is cloudless, and I know that I have lots of lovely bright daylight to look forward to. However, despite the sunshine and my upbeat mood, the World Happiness Report has just told me that I live in a country that is quite a way down the list of the happiest places on earth to live. 

The country that tops the poll for the fifth time in a row is Finland which, having lived in the geographically adjacent country of Sweden for a couple of years, I find somewhat baffling. Why? Because of the extremely cold temperatures during the long winter months combined with the darkness that descends every day in the winter for up to twenty very gloomy hours.

So, if the people of Finland, swiftly followed by other Scandinavian countries like Denmark, Iceland and Sweden top the happiness charts out of 148 countries and have retained their positions at the top for five years, it cannot have much to do with either light or warmth! Nor has it to do with relative wealth because the richest country on earth, the USA, comes in at 24th.  So, why do all those Scandinavian countries score so highly?

Scandinavians have a saying “there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes”. Which bespeaks a degree of hardiness and stoicism, certainly, but also an acceptance that you cannot control the weather or your geographical location, but, perhaps that there is much that you can control to improve the lives of your inhabitants if you understand what makes them happy. There are few surprises in the latest study in the sense that I am sure that, given the choice, we’d all love to live in a place that makes us feel the way that the Finns, Danes, Icelanders and Swedes feel about the culture of their respective countries.

Living in a Benevolent Society

The latest World Happiness Study centres on the cultural value of ‘caring and sharing’ because of the huge impact that this has on people’s happiness, perhaps because, as Shakespeare says of the quality of ‘mercy’ in The Merchant of Venice: “Tis twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes." So the report shows that caring and sharing has benefits for the carers and sharers and for those on the receiving end of both.

Before I detail the findings in the study, I thought I’d ask you what makes you happy, particularly in relation to caring and sharing? We tend to think of ‘caring’ solely in relation to being an actual carer be that of a child or a sick or aged relative, but in the study the definition is much broader and encompasses the notion of ‘being a caring person’ which extends out into ‘living in a caring society’. 

As an older person I am acutely aware of how kind strangers are to me. Just this past weekend on a trip by train to Harrogate, a young woman during rush hour carried my case down a long flight of stairs at Vauxhall when she saw me struggling. It turned out she had been to school in Harrogate, so we had a lovely chat as we descended the staircase, which brightened my day, and hopefully hers too.

Creating Benevolence

The Happiness Study shows that acts of helping a stranger, volunteering, and giving to charity all increase a sense of benevolence in a society. All those kindnesses create the most happiness when the motivation is to help others rather than to feel good about yourself. I prefer donating to charities where I know that the money will make a real difference about something I care about.

On the day after we received the devastating diagnosis of my special granddaughter India’s rare chromosomal abnormality, and despite it being a Saturday, my call to a small charity called Unique, which specialises in this area, was answered by their chief executive, Beverley Searle. She was kindness personified, answered all my many questions, soothed some of my fears and helped me more than I can say. Two years later at the launch party for LFF, I invited Beverley and we raised £1000 on the evening with a raffle for her charity and, thirteen years later, I continue my support of such a worthwhile cause.

Why Perceptions Matter

 Unfortunately scepticism about benevolence persists because there is a great deal of pessimism about how benevolent people are. Few people expected their wallet to be returned if they lost it and yet when researchers dropped wallets in the street a much greater proportion were returned than expected, which is surprising, but also important to know. 

Why? Because the researchers found that our wellbeing also depends on the perceptions we have of others’ benevolence. Those of you who live outside London, and who are told terrible stories about how brutal and crime ridden our capital is, may be surprised to learn that I am very frequently offered a seat by younger people on underground trains. I can also say, quite honestly, that in London, where I have lived in three different locations over the past thirty years, I have not once felt fearful or threatened by others, quite the reverse.

The Benevolence Bump

The most important thing about a caring society is that the people who benefit most from it are the ones who are the least happy. As a result, happiness is more equally distributed in countries with higher levels of both actual and perceived benevolence. 

Caring increased during the pandemic in every region of the world. I had a stranger checking on me within a fortnight of the first lockdown to ask whether I needed help to shop for food, which I thought was remarkable as well as immensely reassuring. The study calls this the ‘benevolence bump’ and reveals that it has been sustained with benevolent acts up by 10% compared to pre-pandemic levels.

The Perfect Family Size for Happiness

The Happiness Study also looked at the impact of sharing to enhance wellbeing. As I live alone, this part of the study gave me the most pause for thought. The research shows that living within a family is very good for you as long as it’s not too big. Happiness rises with household size up to the ideal of four people after which it starts to decline. So that old belief of the perfect configuration of two adults and their average of 2.4 children is true after all. And living alone is shown to make for more misery than joy. 

The other worrying trend is increasing loneliness among young people. In 2023, 19% of young adults across the world reported having no-one they could count on for social support, a 39% increase since 2006. However, as mentioned above,  they often underestimate the benevolence of others. After a powerful intervention, students at Stanford University became much happier when given evidence of the kindness of their peers.

Sharing Meals

Obviously there are many ways we can share experiences with other people but perhaps the most universal is sharing meals. Research for the Happiness Study showed that dining alone isn't good for your wellbeing. People who eat frequently with others are a lot happier and this holds even taking into account household size. The increasing number of people who eat alone is one reason for declining wellbeing in the USA which has slipped from 15th place on the Happiness Index to 24th in ten years. The UK is at 23rd place, down two places over the same period. 

I eat most of my meals alone except for Sunday evening when I have supper at the home of my daughter Anna, her husband and two teenage sons. I look forward to this enormously as an opportunity to reconnect with the whole family and have found that the best way to get the boys away from their screens before supper is to suggest an absorbing game we can all play. Our latest favourite is Qwerkle.

Despair is the Opposite of Happiness

Despair in a society can be measured by the number of deaths from suicide or substance abuse. Fortunately deaths of this kind are falling in the majority of countries, though not in the USA or the Republic of Korea. Deaths of despair are significantly lower in countries which demonstrate high levels of the benevolence I have mentioned - volunteering, donating to worthwhile causes and altruistic acts of kindness from strangers. 

And finally, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the degree of such benevolence (perceived or actual) has a significant impact on the politics of a country. Unhappy people gravitate towards populist parties that nourish their grievances. We saw this in the UK during the Brexit referendum, a ‘wedge issue’ that forced people into opposing camps, causing division, sometimes within families.

Before I started to read the very long and very comprehensive World Happiness Report, I couldn’t imagine how they could possibly decide that Finland was the happiest country once again whilst Afghanistan continues to languish at the bottom of the chart.  After all, my personal experience of happiness is subjective, emotional, varies from day to day depending on my mood and also from year to year depending on my circumstances. Having understood the methodology* I now understand just how important to my mental health and wellbeing is the sense that I am living in a benign environment that feels caring and benevolent and which provides me with rich opportunities to share my life with others. 

We can’t all move to Finland, so it behoves us all to do what we can to emulate the many ways that the Finns have managed to create the happiest place on earth for the majority of the lucky people who feel so positive about their lives there. 

Evidently, it’s not weather or light that makes us happy, it’s knowing that we live in a place that values and nourishes us as human beings. 

Tricia x

*Methodology used to create the World Happiness Index

A nationally representative group of approximately 1,000 is asked a series of questions relating to their life satisfaction, as well as positive and negative emotions they are experiencing. The life evaluation question is based on the Cantril ladder, wherein the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for a person (a score of 10/10) and on the flipside, the worst possible life (0/10). The main takeaway is that the score results from self-reported answers by citizens of each of these countries. The results received a confidence interval of 95% meaning that there is a 95% chance that the answers and population surveyed represent the average. As well, scores are averaged over the past three years in order to increase the sample size of respondents in each country.

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