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After the Bell: Happiness is more than a warm sun 

After the Bell: Happiness is more than a warm sun 
Tim Cohen
By Tim Cohen
28 Mar 2023
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How happy are you? It’s a deceptively simple question. And even if you feel you answer very precisely, try to imagine what it is exactly that makes you happy — or angry. The whole investigation seems like a minefield.

I think striving for happiness is a bit like striving to be a better soccer player; practice and fortitude will help, but the truth is that you probably just are what you are. Take the matter of exercise in general. I have a very unhappy relationship with my Apple watch, which insists on tracking one day at a time with a boring sequentiality. I often say to my watch, “Skip till Friday”, but no cigar.

It’s not just mechanical; my watch is capable of the most incredible passive aggression. It tracks my “rings” each day — the extent to which I satisfy my standing/walking/exercising goals in a circular graphic form. “Closing a ring” means satisfying one of those goals. Late in the evening, my watch will often say to me, “You can still make it.” Well, yes, I could get out of bed and go for a run; on the other hand, I could smash this watch with a chair. That would also be a satisfying goal.

A friend of mine WhatsApped recently, “I don’t understand it. All I ever seem to do is work and sleep, but I always seem to be tired and broke.” Happiness is, if nothing else, elusive. And life is like a test you didn’t study for, etc.

Happiness study


So where is this all going? I was surprised to see recently that the Sustainable Development Solutions Network does an annual global study on happiness, and tries to measure global happiness, country by country. The latest set, produced with the assistance of some big-name scholars, covers more than a decade up to and including 2022. 

I didn’t know about the study, but it’s been going on since 2006 and its results are interesting and important, both economically and politically. They are also damn strange, so much so, you can’t help wondering whether these results are showing anything real. But some of the findings seem to me instinctively correct.

It’s called the World Happiness Report, logically, and the methodology, at the root, is refreshingly simple: the report polls a representative sample of about 1,000 people in each country with the simple question, “Overall, how satisfied are you with your life these days?” Respondents are asked to reply on a 0-10 scale. It then correlates that data with other data sets, like GDP per capita (interestingly, on a natural log basis), inequality, perceptions of corruption, the freedom to make life choices, health and longevity, and levels of generosity. The intention here is to see what exactly is moving the needle.

The first surprise is that overall, levels of global happiness (or sadness, if you want to put it that way) did not decline (increase) during the Covid period. To me, that is pretty extraordinary but weirdly understandable. On an average basis, the numbers didn’t deviate at all. Generally, levels of fear over health issues increased during the period, but levels of generosity increased, and that helped to counterbalance the scale.

Scandinavians score best 


The report also produces a happiness ranking averaged over three years, and it will surprise nobody that Scandinavian countries are right at the top of the list. Scandinavian countries make up five of the eight top countries, offering the combination of high living standards, tight communities, moderate inequality, low levels of corruption and great healthcare — I mean, what else can you ask for? I suppose you could ask for more sun; it is kinda weird that countries that are so dark can be so happy.

But what surprised me was the absolute level of happiness in the Scandinavian countries; the winner was Finland, with almost 80% of the adult population expressing satisfaction with their lives. I mean, really? Maybe there is just a more philosophical approach to life in Scandinavia; people are neither really happy nor sad, so “satisfied” more or less covers it.

Finland came top for the third year in a row. My wife loves the fact that there is a single word in Finnish for the happy feeling you get when you just know you are going to stay at home and get drunk alone in your kitchen in your underwear. It’s “kalsarikannit” — literally, “underwear drunk”.

SA mid-range


The results for SA are a bit disappointing because for some reason the survey here was not taken in 2022, but SA sits around 85th out of the 109 countries on the list, so I guess you could say we are generally pretty miserable. But the absolute level is around five, which is mid-range. It will be interesting to see if the level decreases further with higher levels of corruption and social issues like load shedding and community service dysfunctionality. African countries generally are pretty low on the list, as you might expect, with Africa’s higher levels of poverty and governance issues.

I think the most interesting part of the report is the split between the top and bottom half. What this shows, in general, is that although average global happiness has not changed significantly over the past decade, happy people are getting happier and unhappy people are becoming less happy.  

This applies to the globe as a whole, but it differs markedly by region. In Africa, that assertion is particularly true, as it is in North America and Western Europe. But it’s not true for Eastern Europe, where the means of both the bottom 50% and the top 50% are improving. The same is true of China.

Overlay that finding on to global politics and global economics, and it makes total sense. Politics in North America and Europe have just gotten more angry and bitter. Witness the protests in France and the politics of division in the US. Politics in regions where everyone in society is getting richer, like China and Southeast Asia, and to a lesser extent, Eastern Europe, seem more stable.

It seems clear to me this survey is somewhat useful if only to dispel some myths. For all the dystopian views out there, we may not be a universally happy place, but generally, happiness is holding up. As Oscar Wilde said, some cause happiness wherever they go, some when they go. I also like the adage that money can’t buy happiness, but it is often easier to find in a convertible sportscar. DM/BM

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