Happiness: A New Paradigm to Assess Global Wellbeing and Development.

Thursday, 16 de January de 2020

Can happiness be measured?

If we look up for the definition of “happiness” we can find that it is a state of wellbeing, joy and contentment. Happiness has also been related to life satisfaction, appreciation of life and moments of pleasure, but overall it has to do with the positive experience of emotions. This means that a “happy person” is not immune to negative events or emotions, it just means that these persons have positive experiences out of negative ones because they process things differently or they may find meaning in a way others have not.

Researchers have for long attempted to measured happiness, using several approaches to obtain accurate information about the state of happiness from individuals. These approaches include:

Biological Markers: A substance, hormone or neurotransmitter that can measure happiness.
Behavior: Researchers have used behaviors to estimate happiness, such as frequency of smiling, laughing and helping others.
Implicit Measures: They typically assess reaction times in connecting positive and negative terms to one another.
Others' Reports: Asking others to rate a person's happiness has been useful.
Self-Reports: Using multiple-item scales or single questions, simply asking people about their level of happiness.

When using self-reports as a research resource, people think about their own happiness, as it is a subjective state, so it makes sense to ask people directly about it. This last resource has been used by several governments in accordance with the United Nations (UN) to create the World Happiness Report, an annual publication of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. It contains articles and rankings of national happiness based on respondent ratings of their own lives. And recently, happiness has been used as an indicator for national progress, instead of relying only on gross domestic product (GDP).

The first report was released in April 2012 in support of a UN High Level Meeting on “Wellbeing and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm”. That report presented the available global data on national happiness and reviewed related evidence from the emerging science of happiness, showing that the quality of people’s lives can be coherently, reliably and validly assessed by a variety of subjective well-being measures, collectively referred to then and in subsequent reports as “happiness.” The reports were issued in 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016 (an update), 2017, 2018, and more recently in 2019.

In addition to ranking countries happiness and well-being levels, each report has contributing authors that focus on specific subjects. The data used to rank countries in each report is drawn from the Gallup World Poll, as well as other sources such as the World Values Survey. The Gallup World Poll questionnaire measures 14 areas within its core questions: business and economic, citizen engagement, communications and technology, diversity (social issues), education and families, emotions (wellbeing), environment and energy, food and shelter, government and politics, law and order (safety), health, religion and ethics, transportation, and work.

The latest report published in 2019 shows for the second year in a row that Finland has ranked #1 and it has been named the “happiest country in the world”. And it is not that hard to understand why Finland’s citizens are the happiest people, according to this report. Finland has a strong social safety net that includes a progressive, successful approach to ending homelessness, a high-quality education system and it is committed to closing the gender gap in society. Local development policies are focused on supporting citizens to accomplish the most basic goals in life, health, education and a balanced work and family time. With these aspects taken care of, it is easy to keep citizens satisfied and feeling fulfilled with their lives.

If we take a look at Latin American countries, Costa Rica appears first in the ranking at the #12 spot, Mexico is ranked #22, followed by Chile (#24) and Guatemala (#25), then Panama (#29), Brasil (#30) Uruguay (#31) and El Salvador (#33), Colombia (#41), Nicaragua (#43), Argentina (#44), Ecuador (#46), Bolivia (#56), Paraguay (#58), Peru (#59), Dominican Republic (#70) and finally Venezuela appearing at the lowest of the region at the #100 spot.

Why are Costa Ricans so happy?

In 2015, a study sponsored by the National Cooperative of Educators was conducted, where Gross National Happiness (GNH) was measured. This term was first introduced in 1972 by Jigme Singye Wangchuck, King of Bhutan, a buddhist nation that uses GNH as its main indicator for development measurement.

The GNH was assessed by 9 dimensions which had 31 indicators in total, these dimensions were health, life standard, education, time use, psychological wellbeing, life in community, ecological diversity, culture and government. For the study, 1285 citizens between the ages of 15 and 75 were interviewed. The overall happiness percentage was 85,5%, the study also concluded that economical growth is important but is not the only thing that can influence in the happiness of a population. Higher education and better life standards seemed to represent a big influence in the perception of happiness, as well as health and ecological dimensions.

Education and material fulfillment turned out in higher happiness indicators. People also seemed unsatisfied with culture, psychological wellbeing, community life and government administration.

But in general, people in Costa Rica appeared to be "happy" and this matches future reports like the one published by the UN in 2019. Costa Rica is the Finland of our region, maybe it is because of the feeling of fulfillment accomplished by local policies that focus on covering the basic needs of the population.

Does this mean that Venezuelans are sad?

Venezuela seems to be the biggest loser of our region, appearing last in the ranking at the #100 spot, having lost several spots over the years since the reports started to be published. An average ranking of 44 between 2012 and 2015, #82 in 2017, #102 in 2018 and having gained two spots in 2019.

There are no local studies conducted in Venezuela for the assessment of happiness. If you look up "happiness in Venezuela" over the internet, you will find that a Viceministry of Supreme Happiness was created in 2013 with the objective to assist the local population and their needs. Apparently, and according to the UN annual reports, some people in Venezuela have not been doing their job properly.

Venezuelans are sad because they are not feeling fulfillment in their lives.

If you ask me, a millennial from Venezuela, I would agree. Our basic needs, like food, health, basic services, education, recreation, economical stability, culture and spiritually, have become a big struggle. And when basic needs are not covered, people start feeling unsatisfied and unstable, leading to frustration and unhappiness.

I believe that governments, and not only in Venezuela, should develop policies that are back to the basics, covering people's needs and making them feel stable. And from that point, maybe things would start to get better for everyone.

Ultimately speaking, happiness is a subjective perception, some people are authentically happy in tough environments while others seemed to have it all and are truly depressed. It all depends on the individual's mechanism to deal with negative situations.

Maybe in the future, researchers will be able to compare people from the happiest countries with people from not-so-happy countries and determine the difference in their brains that makes this an existing perception. It would be an interesting idea to discover a neurological brain pattern for happiness.

But in the meantime, I believe that happiness is a state of mind and it is within each one of us, we all have the resources and the power to reach it, we just need to look closely.