Introduction

What does happiness mean to you? What does happiness mean to your friend? Do you and your friend value the same aspects that quantify happiness and a meaningful life? 

When approaching a topic as personal as “happiness,” we must also recognize its subjective nature. Since our analysis is solely derived from the World Happiness Reports, which is composed entirely of subjective answers to polls, our team needed to address possible shortcomings and silences within our dataset. By delving into the origins of the World Happiness Reports and their meticulous data collection process, we were able to establish a better understanding of potential biases and recognize information that was left out. Ultimately, this insight allowed us to construct a more accurate and nuanced narrative of happiness across the globe.

Origins

“Gross National Happiness” first became integrated with governmental and developmental practices in 1972 when Jigme Singye Wangchuck became king of Bhutan (Thinley 2007). This concept is rooted in the belief that well-being and happiness should be given equal importance as common economic indicators, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) when measuring a nation’s development. Almost 40 years later, following the passing of the Bhutanese Resolution in 2011, national governments were encouraged to follow Bhutan’s steps and prioritize happiness and well-being when it came to measuring social and economic growth.

In 2012, Jigmi Y. Thinley, the prime minister of Bhutan, and Jeffrey Saches spearheaded the creation of the first World Happiness Report, with the Earth Institute at Columbia University acting as its primary hub. The World Happiness Report is a publication of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a non-profit launched by the United Nations to promote sustainable development goals. Since its inception, they have received additional research support from the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

Sources

The World Happiness Reports are based on a wide range of data, but the Gallup World Poll (GWP), which is exceptional in its scope and comparability of global annual polls, is the most significant source of its information. Factors represented in the data, such as GDP per capita and Healthy Life Expectancy, were derived and extrapolated from sources such as the World Development Indicators and the World Health Organization (WHO), respectively. More subjective indicators, such as corruption perception, freedom to make life choices, and overall happiness score, are sourced from the Gallup World Poll responses. Scores are calculated by taking the national average to the binary responses from survey questions such as “Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?” or “Is corruption widespread throughout the government or not?”

Shortcomings

Although the World Happiness Report provides an extensive overview of different countries and regions and incorporates diverse data sources, it is important to recognize that there are intrinsic shortcomings when trying to gather a comprehensive portrayal of the entire world. Firstly, the definitions of “happiness” and “well-being” tend to vary across different groups of people. Additionally, a finding performed by Dariuish et al. suggests that up to half of one’s happiness can be attributed to hereditary factors (2022). Furthermore, Dariush et al. emphasizes that hormones including oxytocin, cortisol, and adrenaline, critically impact happiness levels within each individual, affecting the accuracy of the portrayal of the countries involved in the study (2022).

Cultural and societal contexts play an important role in shaping an individual’s perceptions of happiness. Demographic information, such as the nation’s median age, is not included in the dataset. Data collected from countries with an older population are anticipated to be different from countries with a younger population. Older individuals may hold different perspectives on social support, education, and work-life balance when compared to their younger counterparts.

Furthermore, each country in the study has different notions of happiness and socio-cultural contexts that can not be captured from a survey alone, which naturally introduces a level of bias. For example, if a country’s structure tends to reflect traditional gender norms with a more pronounced male dominance, the project may mistakenly paint a population to be more “happy” than it truly is by prioritizing the lifestyles of men. Subjective metrics such as one’s perception of government corruption may exhibit variations due to different government structures.

While the data is compiled from a wide range of sources, they primarily originate from the West. Banerjee et al. and Kaufman et al. posit that the World Happiness Report’s Western leanings are a potential source of bias when assessing the true state of happiness on a global level (2022). Despite the aim of the project being to quantify perceptions of happiness from the entire world, Kaufman et al.’s primary finding is that the World Happiness Report fails to assess the varied experiences as it does not consider regional differences defining happiness (2022). If this dataset were the only source, one may mistakenly assume that a country is “happier” due to Western standards of high quality of life.

Conclusion

Simply collapsing happiness into a singular number based on survey questions is a reductive process. When exploring a topic as broad as a country’s overall happiness, we must acknowledge the loss of the unique experiences and lives of the billions of individuals that could not be captured by a handful of binary variables alone. The data can not accurately represent those from all minority groups and it would be an injustice to have the results of a survey be applied as a blanket statement for every person in a country. As a team, we must recognize the silences and biases from the dataset and aim to conduct an analysis and present a narrative that provides the most faithful representation of each country’s reality.