World Happiness Report 2018-2019

The World Happiness Report is a survey that measures happiness on a global scale and ranks 156 countries by how happy their citizens consider themselves to be on a yearly basis. This survey has started off in 2012 by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network and has been successfully conducting and sharing the results every year. World Happiness Report focuses on a variety of attributes pertaining to social impact, generosity factor, life expectancies, freedom to make life choices, perception towards corruption and generosity. This report helps in reflecting on how the dimensions of happiness are evolving and how it can create an impact on the society.

The happiness score is measured on a scale of 0-10. Finland tops the list in both the years with a score of 7.63 and 7.77 respectively.

To get a broad overview as to what countries in which regions are staying happy, Finland in Europe & Central Asia, Costa Rica in Latin America & Caribbean, Israel in Middle East & North Africa, New Zealand in East Asia & Pacific, Mauritius in Sub-Saharan Africa are the most happiest countries according to the survey. There might be numerous factors contributing to that. Let's look at the top 10 happy countries and the significant contributing factors for both the years.

While every country is happy to a certain extent, mostly Nordic countries namely Finland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Switzerland are a few that have been consistently happy over the years. Finland has consecutively been marked as the happiest country for 3 years since 2017 and Nordic countries continue to be in the top 3 positions. The factors that are contributing to happiness in general are GDP per capita, Social support, Healthy Life Expectancy, Freedom to make life choices, Generosity, Perceptions of Corruption, out of which the significant contributing factors are GDP per capita, Social support, Healthy Life Expectancy and Freedom to make life choices. It gives us a sense about the experience of Nordic citizens towards liberty and autonomy, explains their high social support and mutual respect that sustains their life and plays a pivotal role in determining their life expectancy and satisfaction.

Iceland has the highest social support as a key factor, whereas for Norway it's GDP per capita and Healthy Life Expectancy is topped by Switzerland in 2019.

There's a possibility for correlations between the attributes contributing to happiness and the score itself. We just saw the top 10 most happiest countries, let's dive deep into individual relationships and see how do they reflect region wise.

Does money influence people to rate their lives? True, for a few regions like Europe & Central Asia, East Asia & Pacific, Middle East & North Africa. This makes sense since GDP per capita has been one of the most contributing factors to maintaining happy lives. According to World Happiness Report published by United Nations, the richer the people, the higher the people rate their lives. People in Sub-Saharan regions tend to be on the lower side of both happiness and affluence. In 2019, Finland stands at the top with the highest happiness score at a GDP of 1.34. In 2018, although, United Arab Emirates had a higher GDP of 2.1, higher than Finland, it was not as happy as a few other nations. Overall, money does have a linear relationship with Happiness score.

Happiness is a cognitive and emotional comprehension in a person's life and is perceived as a positive experience. Social support can play a huge role in inculcating that positive experience within a person. Happiness Score and Social Support Score share a linear relationship indicating that the more social support and respect a person gets the more happier the person is. Most of the citizens in Europe & Central Asia are happy due to social support. In 2019, Finland stands at the top with the highest happiness score at a social support score of 1.59. In 2018, Iceland had the most social support of 1.61 and yet was not the happiest.

Generally speaking, people who stay happy are prone to lead a longer life, mainly because they're not bound to unnecessary social stigma, stress and negativity in their lives. The relationship between Happiness Score and Healthy Life Expectancy corroborates the above stated sentence. People in East Asia & Pacific, Europe & Central Asia, Latin America & Caribbean tend to live longer and have a healthy life because they're happy than most of the world population. In 2019, Finland stands at the top with the highest happiness score at a Healthy Life Expectancy score of 0.99. In 2019, Singapore had the most Healthy Life Expectancy of 1.14 and yet was not the happiest.

Every person should be in a capacity to make their own life decisions without any barriers or hindrances, This is equally important to being happy. Although most of the regions do have higher freedom to make life choices not everyone is elated about their decisions Mostly Europe & Central Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Middle East & North Africa are happy. In 2019, Finland stands at the top with the highest Happiness score at a Freedom to make life choices score of 0.6. In 2018, Uzbekistan had the most Freedom to make life choices score of 0.72 and yet was not the happiest.

Does having a corrupt perception help in staying happy? Maybe not. Most of the citizens are having a very less corrupt score, Corruption takes away happiness, probably because of the circumstances to be faced with later once convicted. It also speaks for the regions' ethical and moral standards. Having said that, there are still a few places which are corrupt and yet happy, especially the Nordic countries like Finland, Denmark and Switzerland. Overall, Corruption is not positively correlated with Happiness Score. In 2019, Finland stands at the top with the highest happiness score at a Corruption score of 0.39. In 2018, Singapore had the most Corruption score of 0.46 and yet was not the happiest.

Happiness is a choice and so is being generous. Although generosity doesn't have any linear relationship with Happiness Score, most of the countries are happy even with average generosity score. In both the years, Myanmar had the highest generosity score of 0.6 and 0.57 respectively. Although Finland had a lesser generosity score of 0.15 in 2019, it stood as the most happiest nation, probably because most of the other factors were also contributing towards it.

Over the years, GDP per capita, Social Support share the same pattern, Healthy life expectancy has slightly increased in 2019, Freedom to make life choices and Generosity decreased in 2019. Healthy life expectancy, GDP per capita, Social Support and Freedom to make life choices have always been linear in both the years. The patterns and the relationships vary by a slight amount. United Arab Emirates had the highest GDP per capita 2.1 in 2018, while Qatar 1.68 does in 2019 both from Middle East & North Africa region. Singapore had the highest perceptions to corruption score in both the years and clearly wasn't happy. In 2018, Hong Kong had the highest Life Expectancy 1.03 while in 2019, Singapore was at 1.14.

The interactive radial chart helps determine how huge a role did the factors play in each region and each year. The insights summarizes the observations made so far. Total Happiness score in general has increased from 2018 to 2019 indicating that people are transforming their lives towards being more happy and finding the reason within. Social support was better in 2018 comparatively just by a slight variation.

To conclude, in order to stay happy, people consider social support, money, freedom and healthy life on a larger scale. Happiness is not just a score but a portrayal of people's lifestyle choices, moral and ethical choices and mental health stability. Conducting these surveys can actually help in enhancing not just people's life but address the society in general. Hoping to see more countries take part in this survey and evolve towards the path of staying blissful and happy.