JOIN USThe ‘World happiness report 2017,’ fifth in the series, of the United Nations, has come out with its latest ranking of the countries based on subjective well-being. While the main purpose of all the happiness reports has been to understand and measure the subjective well-being of the people, the current report desired to move further deep into the social foundation of happiness. But a closer look at this report shows that its subjective appraisal is not a ‘eureka’ moment to make the entire world happy.
The report analyses the levels, changes and determinants of happiness among and within 155 nations based on individual life evaluations in them. The method used was to elicit the sample population’s responses to what is called a Cantril ladder question. They were asked to imagine a ladder with steps numbered from 0 to 10 and to tell on which step of the ladder they personally felt they were standing. Then an analysis was made to see how the six specific factors which were supposed to influence happiness, were acting on the people and thereby on individual countries.
The six variables of happiness include two economic variables, GDP per capita and healthy years of life expectancy and four social factors — Social support (having someone to count on in times of trouble), trust (evaluated on the basis of level of corruption in government and business), special freedom, that is the freedom to make life decisions) and generosity (measured by recent donations made).
Thus the 155 countries studied were ranked from the highest to the lowest scores on a scale of 0 to 10. The top five happiest countries were Norway (7.537), Denmark (7.522), Iceland (7.504), Switzerland (7.494) and Finland (7.469), while the bottom five were Central African Republic (2.693), Burundi (2.905), Tanzania (3.349), Syria (3.462) and Rwanda (3.471).
Although the connection between poverty and happiness is clearly visible in general, the reports draw American and Chinese experience to show that social factors in these countries were responsible for their deteriorated happiness.
Similarly, the India experience was also not found great. With 4.315 Cantrill ladder points and 122nd rank, India is below 121 countries of the world. It lagged behind even Srilanka, Bangladesh, South Africa, Nepal and Pakistan.
That the countries with huge population like China, India and Indonesia are not the top scorers, itself indicates that most of the world population are not a happy lot. Contrary to the expectation of the report, poor countries in general are among the less happy group, all the top 25 countries are in the high-income group while the bottom 25 are in the low-income group.
Nudging governments
However, the report in a way indicates that the governments must evolve a corruption-free society and build up a strong social security system. More importantly, it suggests that they concern more on the quality of the GDP, instead of its fast growth. In other words, growth without social justice, would not lead to happiness.
It is not out of place to quote the ‘Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2016: Taking on Inequality’ of the World Bank, which had reiterated that there were 767 million people living below poverty line as of 2013.
So, whatever the methods to assess world misery, poverty remains its main cause. After all, poverty is the mother of all ills. Although the happiness report has shown that a section of the human society is happy or some countries are happy, while the rest are unhappy, that would not be palatable to the civilised society. Some cannot be happy while their fellow human beings are starving. Nothing but an equitable society can bring world happiness.
Unfortunately, the current global trends do not suggest that society is heading towards the goal of achieving happiness for the entire world. If at all, both poverty and economic inequalities are deepening. The happiness report can serve its purpose only if the governments of the world realise at least now the failure of their policies in addressing human deprivation and, the consequences of their wrong priorities.
Although the destination of happiness in real sense is far away, the strides to reach it cannot be postponed forever, particularly when a large number of people in the world continue to be unhappy and live in sub-human conditions for generations altogether. Hopefully, this report would nudge the governments to think on these lines.