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Outside In | World Happiness Day: how should we measure contentment in times of war and crisis?

  • While happiness might seem hard to come by amid geopolitical, economic and climate uncertainty, recent polls have found that levels remain resilient
  • This suggests that factors like a sense of community, goodwill and trust in leadership contribute more to well-being than individual prosperity

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In the village of Tsentralne, Ukrainian family members meet for the first time since Russian troops withdrew from the Kherson region, southern Ukraine, on November 13 last year. Despite the war, the World Happiness Report survey found “remarkably resilient” happiness levels in Ukraine, supported by a stronger sense of common purpose, benevolence and people’s trust in their leadership. Photo: AP
In case you missed it, as banks crashed, war raged on Ukraine, mortgage rates continued to rise, scientists released yet graver warnings about a looming climate Armageddon, and both Donald Trump and Boris Johnson faced inquisitions on their past sins, last Monday was World Happiness Day.
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The day attracted at least two global surveys on the state of world happiness in this most unhappy of weeks. They were fascinating not just because of their counter-intuitive findings, but because they were clearly looking at very different worlds.

Ipsos, in a poll last December of 22,000 people across 32 countries, discovered that China was the world’s happiest country, with 91 per cent of respondents claiming contentment. If I recall correctly, China was around that time experiencing street protests over still-extensive Covid-19 lockdowns. Saudi Arabia ranked second (with 86 per cent claiming to be very happy) and, more plausibly, the Netherlands was third with 85 per cent. India (84 per cent) and Brazil (83 per cent) came in fourth and fifth.
The report found a big jump in happiness across Latin America and a colossal 11 per cent fall in happiness in the UK. Given the political and economic chaos in the UK over the past couple of years, this may come as no great surprise.
But perhaps most surprising was how different Ipsos’ findings were to the much more comprehensive World Happiness Report (known to many simply as the WHR), underpinned by polling from Gallup, and now in its 11th year. This polled over 100,000 people across 134 countries, and placed five Nordic countries, led by Finland, among the top 10 happiest countries.
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Part of the difference was certainly due to the smaller number of countries polled by Ipsos. Eight of the top 10 happy countries in the WHR – Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Israel, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg and New Zealand – were not included in the Ipsos poll.

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