Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren fog obamb Here. Those Nordic countries have done it again.
Speaker 1: According to the eighteen World Happiness Report, Finland is the
Speaker 1: happiest country in the world, making it a Nordic clean
Speaker 1: sweep for five out of the past six World Happiness Reports.
Speaker 1: Switzerland stole the top spot in and coming in second
Speaker 1: is last year's champ Norway, followed by Denmark and Iceland.
Speaker 1: With their dominance of the happiness rankings, the Nordic countries
Speaker 1: may have the rest of the world wondering whether the
Speaker 1: recipe for true happiness involves an obsession with cured fish
Speaker 1: and creative wood stacking. But a closer look at the
Speaker 1: methodology behind the World Happiness Report reveals an interesting anomaly.
Speaker 1: Depending on which survey questions you weigh higher on the
Speaker 1: happiness scale, the Fins and Danes may not actually be
Speaker 1: the happiest people on the planet. Instead, that distinction might
Speaker 1: very well belong to Columbia, El Salvador and other relatively
Speaker 1: poor Latin American countries. So how could Columbia, which ranks
Speaker 1: thirty seven on this year's World Happiness Report, be the
Speaker 1: real winner? The answer is that there are two distinct
Speaker 1: ways of gauging happiness. The World Happiness Report relies on
Speaker 1: data from the Gallop World Poll, a massive survey of
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty countries in a hundred and forty languages,
Speaker 1: covering topics from government corruption to job security to lgbt
Speaker 1: Q rights. The most recent report covers data from the
Speaker 1: section of the Gallop World Poll that asks people about
Speaker 1: their personal well being. Includes twelve questions that are designed
Speaker 1: to elicit two very different kinds of answers about happiness.
Speaker 1: John Clifton is a global managing partner at Gallop and
Speaker 1: remembers when the Gallop World Poll was first conceived in
Speaker 1: two thousand five. He says that the survey design team
Speaker 1: consulted with some top minds, including the Nobel Prize winners
Speaker 1: Daniel Koneman, psychologist and economist Angus Deaton, and decided to
Speaker 1: include two different types of happiness questions in the poll.
Speaker 1: One that's an overall life of uation from zero to
Speaker 1: ten and another that focuses on the emotional experiences of
Speaker 1: daily life. Clifton says, we did it very intentionally. The
Speaker 1: way we defined well being or what makes a great
Speaker 1: life is how people live their life and how they
Speaker 1: see their life, so we need metrics for each of them.
Speaker 1: The life evaluation question, also known as Cantroll's Ladder, goes
Speaker 1: like this. Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from
Speaker 1: zero at the bottom to ten at the top. The
Speaker 1: top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you,
Speaker 1: and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible
Speaker 1: life for you. On which step of the ladder would
Speaker 1: you say you personally feel you stand at this time.
Speaker 1: What's interesting about this question is that people's responses track
Speaker 1: closely with income level. The more money you have, the
Speaker 1: more likely you are to say that your life is
Speaker 1: an eight or nine on the ladder. Clifton thinks this
Speaker 1: is because the question is essentially asking are you satisfied
Speaker 1: with your life? Clifton said, when we're asking people to
Speaker 1: reflect on their life and its totality, they're thinking about
Speaker 1: basic needs, whether or not they're able to meet or
Speaker 1: exceed basic needs, and one of the easiest ways to
Speaker 1: do that is with money. The World Happiness Report, which
Speaker 1: routinely ranks wealthy Nordic countries as the happiest, relies almost
Speaker 1: exclusively on people's responses to the latter question. Beyond higher incomes,
Speaker 1: Nordic countries also rank high on other metrics that the
Speaker 1: World Happiness Report equates with well being, freedom, trust of
Speaker 1: the government, long life expectancy, social support, and generosity. But
Speaker 1: what about the second type of happiness question, the one
Speaker 1: based on emotions and daily life experiences. In addition to
Speaker 1: the latter question, the Gallop World Pole poses a series
Speaker 1: of yesterday questions, asking people if they experienced specific positive
Speaker 1: and negative emotions during the previous day, things like smiling
Speaker 1: and laughter, respect, enjoyment, or worry, sadness, and anger. If
Speaker 1: you equite happiness with high levels of positive daily experiences
Speaker 1: and emotions, then several surprising countries come out on top,
Speaker 1: according to Gallop data from Columbia, El Salvador and Guatemala.
Speaker 1: In fact, of the ten countries that rank highest in
Speaker 1: Gallops Positive Experience Index, seven are from Latin America. The
Speaker 1: only Nordic country to make the cut is Iceland at
Speaker 1: number eight. So the question is which is the more
Speaker 1: accurate assessment of happiness, the latter question that favors Nordic
Speaker 1: countries or the experience questions that favor Latin American countries
Speaker 1: and which Gallop uses in its own Global Emotions Report.
Speaker 1: Clifton from Gallop says that both are useful. In his opinion,
Speaker 1: the latter question is the best indicator for policymakers who
Speaker 1: want a big picture metric of how a country is
Speaker 1: doing in general, whether it's people are struggling or thriving.
Speaker 1: In that way, the World Happiness Report gets it right,
Speaker 1: but what that's gauging is probably closer to well being
Speaker 1: than actual happiness. To really zero in on the complex
Speaker 1: emotional state of happiness, Clifton says he prefers those yesterday responses,
Speaker 1: but it's probably too late to change the name of
Speaker 1: the World Happiness Report to the World Well Being Report,
Speaker 1: and frankly, who would want to the former title is
Speaker 1: waked year, Clifton said, the World Happiness Report is one
Speaker 1: of the most, if not the most watched indices in
Speaker 1: the world. You can ask anyone on the street who
Speaker 1: is the happiest country in the world, and they'll tell
Speaker 1: you it's Finland or Norway because they saw a headline
Speaker 1: in the Economist. But the World Happiness Report has not
Speaker 1: ignored the Latin American happiness paradox. Version includes a special
Speaker 1: section on happiness in Latin America and notes that there
Speaker 1: is a reasonable provision of public goods in the region,
Speaker 1: as well as adequate health and education services. The strong
Speaker 1: social connections and close family relationships provide very high levels
Speaker 1: of emotional happiness. However, the high rates of crime, corruption,
Speaker 1: and poverty in many Latin American countries caused them to
Speaker 1: lose points on a general well being scale. Today's episode
Speaker 1: was written by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Clang.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other satisfying topics,
Speaker 1: visit our home planet, how stuff works dot com.