Would you want to live where people are happy?   

Transcript:

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in 2 minutes a day,  through my signature method of Intentional Margins® (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life. 

I'm your host Katie Jefcoat and yesterday we talked about individual happiness, but what happens when we rank ourselves collectively.  One of the ways researchers determine happiness is by a cognitive evaluation.  We talked about this yesterday and those findings determine the UN ranking of happiest countries in the world. So what countries are the happiest, where does the US fall in this comparison? 

Robert F. Kennedy said, GDP measures everything except that which makes life worth living. So, some countries started measuring the things that do make life worth living. 

Countries, taking the lead from the UN are actually working to measure the happiness of their citizens.   It’s fascinating.  The world is starting to move in the direction of happiness goals on a massive scale.   Apparently those reports on the “happiest place to live” actually mean something and researches and governments are using this data to enhance well-being.  

Denmark usually ranks number one in these happiness reports, they mostly look at the average of life satisfaction.  

The most fascinating question is why do some countries consistently rank high and others consistently low.  Well, the low countries usually have high levels of poverty, political unrest, lack of stability.   The countries that consistently rank high are the Nordic countries, and the research seems to indicate that those countries have a good free education system, and usually healthcare as well.  It also seems like they trust their government and their fellow citizens.  In Denmark, you’ll find some of the highest taxes in the world, but they look at it not as extortion,but contributing to the common good and they seem to think more as a society than as an individual, so they tend to think that their government protects them from so many social and physical risks and the taxes are worth it.   I would hypothesize this is the exact opposite of the US, although the US is not ranked in the bottom, it was 19 out of 146 countries on this list in 2021.   

So what can we learn from this type of research?  Move to a Nordic country?  Maybe?  Not being a social scientist, I would argue that the main difference is that one population -Denmark - sees themselves more as a unit, as a society all rowing in the same direction, and the other - the US - sees themselves as individuals.  

Maybe this doesn’t change anything, but I’d like to think as a society we can make small changes in our neighborhood and in our communities to better mimic some of the happiest places to live around the world. 

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World Happiness Report:  https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2021/ 

This episode was inspired by The Happy Course

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