The World Happiness Report is beset with methodological problems

Comments

Comment by dosinga 20 hours ago

I don't know. The World Happiness Report relies on one simple question, which is easy to criticise but at least it applies a clear and consistent method. The paper referred to does not. It uses a special US dataset for states and a much smaller global dataset for every other country, then treats the results as if they measure the same thing. This setup almost guarantees that US states look unusually good. The authors present this as evidence, but it mostly reflects differences in survey design rather than real differences in wellbeing. In that sense the methodological problems here are more serious than the ones they point to in the World Happiness Report.

Comment by rkagerer 19 hours ago

In case others are wondering what the one simple question is (called the Cantril Ladder):

“Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to ten at the top. Suppose we say that the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. If the top step is 10 and the bottom step is 0, on which step of the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?”

Personally feels a little more convoluted than just asking "How happy are you, on a scale of 0-10?"

Comment by staticman2 19 hours ago

I'm not a psychology expert but from stuff I read I bet the reason they don't ask "How happy are you, on a scale of 0-10?" is they tried that and found the same person would give different answers from day to day and moment to moment based on what is going on this very minute.

I'd also bet that they found the above "convoluted" question was one that led to the same people giving more consistent answers from day to day and moment to moment.

Even if I'm wrong I hope you see this is a much thornier problem than just asking a question and assuming the answer tells us anything about the person taking the survey.

Comment by levocardia 18 hours ago

I have done survey methodology research and fully agree, almost assuredly when you see questions worded in a seemingly "convoluted" way like this, the reason is that there was exhaustive research that found this wording was the best balance of reliability and validity.

There is also a lot of value in a question that works well enough, that you ask consistently over long stretches of time (or long stretches of distance). Maybe it's not perfect, but the longitudinal data would be worthless if they updated the wording every single year.

Comment by rolandog 7 hours ago

Agreed!

Although I'm no survey expert, the thing I'd like to bring to everyone's attention is how easy it is to not take into account people that have a degree of numeric or math illiteracy... which I guess they are the main target demographic that is included by these questions (and I can also guess that they make a worryingly large part of the demographic, because our systems are rarely inclusive).

In my experience, having met people from multiple countries during the time I've been living abroad, what I have noticed is that — in this world filled with inequality — it is a privilege to be able to have a good grasp in scientific subjects. And, for lots of different factors, people have setbacks or trauma that make it difficult to learn a subject that is either boring or painful to them.

So, yes the questions are a bit convoluted, but they help paint a mental image for probably the majority with a thing that they may be closely familiar with: stairs... Plus, it probably helps statisticians get a better signal to noise out of the questions, too.

Comment by quitit 3 hours ago

It's easy to overlook the importance in outlining a process for evaluating each rung in the ladder.

Adding this nuance to the question serves to invite deeper thought and avoid assigning a motivation-based rating (like when you give the Uber driver 5 stars when what you felt was actually just "satisfactory").

A more basic rating question can invite other kinds of influence, such as a motivation in how they'd like their life to be perceived rather than how they genuinely feel it to be.

In surveys with less nuance the data tends to correlate around the extremes.

Comment by seizethecheese 19 hours ago

But it needs to be convoluted. The problem with the simpler version is the word happy needs to be translated both culturally and more literally.

Comment by notahacker 18 hours ago

Yep. There are some implicit cultural expectations around "best possible life" which vary from country to country, but it's not quite as much a "is the word in your local language we've rendered as happy closer in meaning to satisfied or ecstatic?" question, and it's also less about short term emotions on the day of the survey and much more about satisfaction with life opportunities, which is generally more relevant for international and longitudinal comparisons...

Comment by nxor 19 hours ago

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Comment by Aperocky 18 hours ago

Happy have so many definition that I like the question better, it is much less ambiguous than "happy".

My happiness changes depending on many external factor and varies by hour and days, but the answer to the former question aren't going to change quite as often, would have probably provided the same answer over the entire year.

Comment by connorshinn 6 hours ago

One possible flaw in this question - I really don't like heights, so the idea of being at the top of a ladder does NOT equate to being happy for me.

Now I know it's a metaphor and not a literal ladder, but it does make me wonder if that association skews the results at all..

Comment by arjie 7 hours ago

What an interesting question. It would seem intuitively that a population with a limited band of socioeconomic mobility must answer 10 and one with a wide band of mobility must answer 0. I wonder whether that is true.

Comment by tobr 18 hours ago

I have to say, I don’t understand what ”for you” means in ”best/worst possible life for you”. At first I read it roughly as ”given the fundamental unchanging circumstances of your life, such as where and when you were born, who your parents are, and your basic health” but maybe they mean something like ”in your subjective perspective on what is good/bad”?

Comment by nhaehnle 15 hours ago

My thought as well, but the question is: does it matter for what the survey is trying to achieve?

Some people will interpret it one way, some a subtly different way, but is there a reason that people's interpretation changes over time in a way that is more rapid and more significant than the underlying question of how good their life is broadly? Probably not.

There may be cultural differences that make it tricky to do comparisons between cultures / countries, but it should give something useful when looking at the same culture / country over time.

Comment by greygoo222 18 hours ago

That's a necessary feature. The best translation of "happy" in different countries can have very different connotations.

Comment by euroderf 10 hours ago

That's why the ladder idea seems good: relatively mistranslation-proof.

For Finland, discussion seems to hinge on whether "happiness" is "close enough" to "contentedness".

Comment by yencabulator 10 hours ago

I'm a Finn. I personally interpret that survey as Finland being the least unhappy place. There's a social safety net, health care is taken care of, you know your life won't get destroyed by the slightest misfortune, you get a good education for free, your surroundings are generally safe and well maintained, you feel safe & are fairly certain nothing bad will happen, there are people around you who share your values, life is good.

Things that for example the article author's favorite USA does not have. But of course a Murkin' can't accept that. I fully expect him to gripe that somehow the Corruption Perceptions Index is also somehow unfair to his favorite country too, and just cannot be right.

You had me at blaming "elites".

Comment by philipallstar 5 hours ago

> Things that for example the article author's favorite USA does not have. But of course a Murkin' can't accept that.

These things are all a proxy for: "America pays for most of our defence and medical advancement research, so we can just spend our money on ourselves. And we aren't glued to a 3rd world continent with a hard-to-defend border."

Americans definitely can accept that that's the case.

Comment by euroderf 4 hours ago

> defence and medical advancement research

These are America's choices. And it's America's choice whether to wield these in world-leading competitiveness or as ossified self-serving bureaucracy.

Other countries make other choices about where to do world-leading R&D (that Americans can take advantage of as lower prices). Chinese solar, for example.

Comment by euroderf 7 hours ago

Kind of a "Minimax" interpretation. Whereas in the USA, when you hit bottom it's so low that you probably ain't comin' up again.

Comment by crimsoneer 7 hours ago

I'm assuming part of this is it's not always asked in English...?

Comment by bossyTeacher 16 hours ago

>"How happy are you, on a scale of 0-10?"

Your question is likely to be interpreted as you asking the person's current MOOD hence different answers on different times are likely. While you are thinking of a less changing wider concept.

The social context is important too, there is a social stigma around admitting that you are not happy which will play into this question too.

Comment by scotty79 17 hours ago

If I feel hopeless, I might think that I live best possible life for me (and answer 10) despite feeling deeply unhappy about it.

Comment by NedF 18 hours ago

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Comment by a_victorp 20 hours ago

Came to say the same thing. The author criticizes the happiness report methodology than immediately cites a report full of methodological problems

Comment by awb0 19 hours ago

One way to interpret this is not as the author's endorsement of the other report, but as a demonstration of how fragile these happiness rankings are to perturbations in methodology / definition.

Comment by Karrot_Kream 18 hours ago

The substack references Nilsson et al [1] in regards to criticisms of the Cantril Ladder. It's a pretty easy to read paper so I highly suggest just reading it.

[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-52939-y.pdf

Comment by darth_avocado 17 hours ago

I am yet to be convinced that 4000 data points are sufficient to extrapolate how happy 2.8B people are in the world. (India and China) Especially when it deals with a complex topic as happiness without taking any cultural differences into account.

People on HN tend to argue it’s sufficient data to be statistically significant, but I don’t see how.

Comment by kansface 18 hours ago

> I don't know. The World Happiness Report relies on one simple question, which is easy to criticise but at least it applies a clear and consistent method.

The simplicity is nice, but for the (probable) fact that suicide attempts/rates and emigration don't correspond... so lets not call it happiness.

Comment by Sam6late 10 hours ago

I would like to rewrite it, replacing desires with hormones, since they are the drivers for desires, when young one could jump a wall, risking his/her life to see the one we desire, then in their fifties on a nude beach everybody looks and feels mundane. The defining experience of our age seems to be biochemical hunger. We're flooded with hormones that tell us to crave more, even when we already have more than we need. We're starved for balance while stimuli multiply around us. Our dopamine peaks and crashes without reason; our cortisol hums in the background like faulty wiring.

We live with a near-universal imbalance: the reign of thin hormones. These thin hormones promise satisfaction but never deliver. They spike and vanish, leaving behind only the impulse to chase the next hit. Philosophers once spoke of desires that change the self; today, our neurochemistry is being short-circuited before the self even enters the conversation.

A thick hormone is slower, steadier. It reshapes you in the process of living it—like the oxytocin that comes from trust, or the endorphins that build with persistence. But thin hormones—those dopamine flickers from notifications, likes, and swipes—do nothing but reproduce themselves. They deliver sensation without transformation, stimulation without growth.

Modern systems have perfected the art of hijacking our endocrine circuitry. Social media fires the neurons of connection without the chemistry of friendship. Porn delivers the hormonal spike of intimacy without the vulnerability that generates oxytocin. Productivity apps grant the dopamine signature of accomplishment with nothing actually achieved. We’ve built an economy not of meaning, but of molecules. And none of it seems to be making us more alive.

Comment by Natsu 18 hours ago

> In that sense the methodological problems here are more serious than the ones they point to in the World Happiness Report.

It's a simple question, sure, but it's not clear that it's a very meaningful one, even if other approaches aren't necessarily any better. When I think of the word happiness, I don't exactly associate it with suicide or rarely smiling.

Comment by stickfigure 18 hours ago

"Pick a random number between 1 and 10" is also a clear and consistent method, and also not particularly meaningful.

The point I took from the article is that we should stop paying attention to this meaningless metric. I didn't read it as a request to replace it with another metric.

Comment by hiAndrewQuinn 20 hours ago

I have lived in Finland for the past four years, having emigrated from the US like the other poster here, and the WHR is a common punching bag topic amongst locals here.

The odd thing however is that when I ask them whether they think the average Finn is happy, they say absolutely not, but when I ask them whether they themselves are happy, most of the time I get a "oh this place is actually pretty great for weirdos like me, I just mean like, normal people would hate it here". But that's the thing: No one normal chooses to live in Finland!

Comment by Lerc 19 hours ago

This is a fairly common discrepancy between how people perceive the mean/median of a property is compared to the mean/median of how they themselves are.

You see it in things like business confidence going in both directions at various times, pessimism when things are going well, optimism when things are going poorly.

It is very convenient in politics, because you can choose which figure to report to make it seem like you are saying the same thing but you can switch between them to make things look good (or bad l, depending on your attention)

Comment by perons 5 hours ago

I'm brazillian, moved to Finland 2 years ago to work here, and can confirm the sentiment.

If you ask a Finn, most people are actually quite harsh to the Finnish government, economy, etc - specially as of recent, since Finland now has one of the worst unemployment rate in EU. But lifestyle here is quite sober, everyone has hobbies and are quite dedicated to them. I guess the Sauna and Avanto culture are the main happiness drivers here, and tbh after experiencing it, I wouldn't change for anything else.

Comment by marcus_holmes 14 hours ago

Friend of mine moved from Australia to Finland, and loved it there. I can't imagine dealing with all that cold after Aussie's wonderful heat, but he loved it.

Happiness is found in different places for different people, thankfully.

Comment by fpoling 11 hours ago

Even when it is extremely cold like -50 Celsius, one can still walk outside for hours with sufficiently warm clothes. But try the same when it is +50. And then spending weeks in air-conditioned apartments was strictly worse for me than in a heated home during the winter. Plus there is no insects when it is cold. So my preference is for colder climate.

Comment by euroderf 10 hours ago

Yup, it's easier to dress for the cold than for the heat. Shorts & sandals only take you so far.

Comment by euroderf 10 hours ago

Unrelated, but this reminds me of Americans' opinions of their congresscritters: Congresscritters as a whole are a terrible, corrupt bunch, but your own congresscritter is amazing!

Comment by QuercusMax 19 hours ago

I have a relative who decided to move up to Baffin Island and get into long-distance arctic trekking. She'd probably fit right in.

Comment by burningChrome 18 hours ago

Played hockey with several Finns. They always seemed grumpy about something. The Norwegians and Swedes I played soccer with always had a more cheerful disposition. They always made fun of the Northern Finns, saying, "You'd be grumpy AF too if you had to deal with Winter for 7 months every year!"

Comment by vidarh 6 hours ago

I'm Norwegian, and the Norwegian stereotype of Finnish people used to be that they are dour and introvert. And we're by and large culturally a lot less outwardly cheerful to people we don't know than the Danes.

Sometimes Norwegian TV would show Finnish dramas while I was growing up in the '80s, and the standing joke was that the typical Finnish drama had two guys hiking through the forest, one of them saying something, and then half an hour more of hiking before the other would reply. I don't remember whether that was accurate (it's not as if I'd have kept watching), but I suspect not.

Comment by looperhacks 8 hours ago

A similar thing was recently reported for Germany as well. When asked how they believe the average German is doing, most people answered something along "worse than me".

Comment by PLMUV9A4UP27D 19 hours ago

As a Finn, I can confirm this.

Comment by bflesch 19 hours ago

Finns are amazing!

Comment by tigranbs 20 hours ago

As a US person, I have lived in Finland for 3 years, and I can assure you that the Finns are the most content people you can imagine! They can go months without talking to anyone and still consider themselves "happy", but the correct word in English is "content".

That report is correct, it just they advertise with the wrong word in the headline, I guess because it is more click-bate title than having it as "The most content country"

Comment by Ekaros 19 hours ago

As Finn I would agree. Finland is fine. Not the greatest and not happiest. But overall it is fine still. In most areas cost of living is pretty reasonable, services are sufficient. Police for example does good enough job. Probably could earn more money somewhere else, but why bother...

Comment by 2 hours ago

Comment by euroderf 10 hours ago

You don't see many cops in Finland. You just don't.

Firstly because the social benefits system keeps a lot of people out of trouble ' call it bribery if you like, but it meets basic needs. Secondly because there's a lot of private "security" types around - for example in the supermarkets, keeping out drunks and dealing with shoplifters - letting the police focus on the real stuff.

Comment by Herring 19 hours ago

It's extremely important if you're interested in social stability. Unhappy people have a tendency to turn authoritarian and lash about, hurting both their own society and anyone who looks different.

Comment by nephihaha 6 hours ago

Authoritarianism is usually imposed from above, not below.

Comment by edwinjm 3 hours ago

In democracies, you sometimes can see authoritarians being elected. Current situation in the USA is one example.

Comment by nephihaha 3 hours ago

Not really. The US situation is engineered so only two parties ever get in, and are practically impossible to remove. Wait several years and the other lot will get in.

Even with Trump we see a lot of policies and directions that the Democrats have pursued previously.

Comment by QuercusMax 19 hours ago

I dunno, "discontent" is a pretty politically charged word, going back to Shakespeare - "Now is the winter of our discontent" from Richard III is referring to an attempted political overthrow.

Unhappiness sounds much more pedestrian.

Comment by jfengel 17 hours ago

It's referring to a successful political overthrow.

The quote really needs the first two lines:

  Now is the winter of our discontent
  made glorious summer by the sun of York.

The verb in the sentence is "is made", not just "is". "Now" it is summer, not winter. They were discontent in the past. Now they are happy.

York (Richard's brother, Edward, now King Edward IV) has overthrown King Henry VI. There's also an important pun: "York" also refers to their father, also named Richard, who was the Duke of York until his death at the hands of Henry's faction. So Edward is also the "son of York".

That said, Richard is being sarcastic. He's plotting the next political overthrow, which will also be successful. And who will in turn be overthrown again. That, at least, will put an end to it, if for no other reason than that literally everybody else is dead.

Comment by QuercusMax 17 hours ago

Leave it to Shakespeare to use a garden-path sentence to open one of his greatest plays....

Comment by nephihaha 6 hours ago

Are they though? Alcoholism and Seasonal Affective Disorder are rife in Nordic countries.

Comment by 10 hours ago

Comment by marifjeren 19 hours ago

The only problem the author points out is that he doesn't like the Cantril Ladder question.

I get it if you feel like that question falls short of representing your own personal concept of happiness, but that question is the standard in positive psychology research for measuring self reported subjective well being, and hardly enough to say the report is "beset with methodological problems".

Comment by imgabe 15 hours ago

They give several well-considered criticisms of the question - it leads people to focus on socioecomonic status, it doesn't correlate with other measure like whether they report experiencing joy recently, etc. It's not much of a defense to simply say "well, it's the standard".

Comment by marifjeren 14 hours ago

My criticism is about how the dramatic language differs from the banal content of the article.

Titling it "The World Happiness Report Is a Sham" and calling it "beset with methodological problems", I would expect some more serious scientific malpractices, like data fabrication, calculation errors, sampling problems, p-hacking, etc., not "I think there are some problems with this variable".

Comment by deaux 12 hours ago

Disagree. Whether I'm entirely fabricating data that claims A by writing numbers into an Excel sheet, or whether I'm doing a survey that measures B and then claim it means A, isn't materially different in outcome. The outcomes are just as bad, and that's what people care about. Maybe you as a researcher care that the former is more immoral, but to everyone else it doesn't matter.

Comment by jltsiren 15 hours ago

Is joy related to happiness, or are they two separate concepts? That depends on your cultural background and the languages you speak.

The World Happiness Report can be traced back to the UN General Assembly Resolution 65/309, which was proposed by Bhutan. Therefore the intended definition of happiness in this context is similar to the one in Bhutan's Gross National Happiness index.

Comment by notahacker 18 hours ago

The more practical problem is that the samples used in the Gallup World Poll are for largely unavoidable reasons small and not representative of entire country demographics; in particular respondents can skew richer and more educated than their national average in poorer countries.

Comment by hamdingers 20 hours ago

> “Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to ten at the top. Suppose we say that the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. If the top step is 10 and the bottom step is 0, on which step of the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?”

My immediate problem with this is the lower bound of responses in a given country would be determined by your perception of the safety nets available to you. Someone in a Scandinavian country where there are virtually no unsheltered homeless people probably doesn't index their zero to "dying of exposure on the sidewalk due to untreated mental illness," while an American who sees that regularly would.

Comment by decimalenough 20 hours ago

That seems to be working as intended? The unhappiness of both "dying of exposure on the sidewalk due to untreated mental illness" and the constant gnawing fear that this is a realistic outcome due to medical bankruptcy or whatever should pull down a country's happiness index.

I've always figured that this is in fact a big reason why the Nordic countries do so well on the survey: the average is lifted not by shiny happy people holding hands, but by the strong safety net ensuring that you can't fall into a pit of despair.

Comment by greygoo222 18 hours ago

You're misreading the comment. hamdingers is suggesting that the fear of "dying of exposure on the sidewalk" is inflating a country's happiness index, because people are using "dying of exposure on the sidewalk" as a realistic worst-case baseline.

Comment by SiempreViernes 16 hours ago

No, the two people before you both understood that point, the disagreement is only on wether it is unfair that a country with a lot of people fearing dying of cold on the sidewalk is considered "less happy".

Comment by 15 hours ago

Comment by SR2Z 20 hours ago

So why then is Bhutan so happy?

Comment by nephihaha 6 hours ago

Because everyone's told to smile?

Seriously, though, I think it is because it has a good natural environment and strong extended families. But that is about to change with their new planned city.

Comment by SpicyLemonZest 20 hours ago

Bhutan is not ranked in the World Happiness Report, and at least one source (https://www.vox.com/policy/471950/gross-domestic-product-eco...) says that international comparative data contradicts the Bhutanese government's claim that their people are particularly happy.

Comment by celeryd 20 hours ago

Someone in a Scandinavian country is probably well informed of how terrible it is for the poorest and most vulnerable outside their country. The indexes are probably the same.

The person in the Scandinavian country, when asked this question, will think "hmm, well I am not in America, so I will add 3 steps to my answer" and, och se där, up they go to the top of the World Ranking.

Comment by SiempreViernes 16 hours ago

Some might do that, but hopefully most people read the question properly and see it specifically asks about the situation for you, so thinking about the starving children in Gaza is not part of the question.

Comment by t0mk 20 hours ago

I don't think that people in Scandinavia are well informed about how life can be for the poorest outside of their country.

> bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life >>>for you<<<.

..and when asked this, I believe they consider how bad it can get for them in their country.

Based on my experience living and talking with people in Scandinavia and eastern europe.

Comment by mvdtnz 19 hours ago

"Scandinavians don't know that poverty exists" is a pretty wild claim.

Comment by haritha-j 5 hours ago

True, although i do think its likely that its not top of mind. When things aren't relatable, its hard to take them into account in everyday life, even when you're factually aware of it.

Comment by opo 11 hours ago

>...Someone in a Scandinavian country where there are virtually no unsheltered homeless people probably doesn't index their zero to "dying of exposure on the sidewalk due to untreated mental illness," while an American who sees that regularly would.

Maybe I am not understanding this - do you think the average American regularly sees people dying of exposure on the sidewalk? Or what do you mean?

Comment by euroderf 8 hours ago

When I was going to grad school in DC, I'd suggest to classmates that we place bets on the date of the first person dying of exposure in the city every winter.

This bet kinda horrified some people, but I think I got my point across.

Comment by 19 hours ago

Comment by levocardia 18 hours ago

>At a minimum, you would expect the happiest countries in the world to have some of the lowest incidences of adverse mental health outcomes. But it turns out that the residents of the same Scandinavian countries that the press dutifully celebrates for their supposed happiness are especially likely to take antidepressants or even to commit suicide.

"Ecological fallacy! Ecological fallacy!," I screamed, flapping my arms pointlessly at my laptop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy#Individual_...

Comment by RamblingCTO 20 hours ago

I've just had this topic with friends. How can finland and the nordics be further up than, say, spain? Have they ever been? Sure, materialistic safety is better up there. But the way of living, at least in my experience, is way higher. Look at suicide rates and alcoholism and such.

I'll spoil it: - Finland 38 - Norway 71 - Spain 137

(fun fact: USA is 31)

ranked by suicide. If you visit it, and the vibes and feelings you have don't match the statistics, the statistics are shit I'd say. And maybe cities and rural areas destroy this statistic. But what do I know (but the article agrees with me)

Comment by estomagordo 20 hours ago

Using suicide rates as a measure for population happiness is very peculiar, given that the people who commit suicide represent fractions of a percent, and would only ever sum up to a rounding error.

Comment by crazygringo 19 hours ago

It's not that peculiar if you assume all countries follow the same type of happiness distribution that is simply shifted/stretched lower or higher.

Then, the relative size of a bottom or top absolute threshold is highly meaningful. Even if it's a fraction of a percent, populations are huge and suicide rates are not rounding errors at all -- they're actually quite statistically significant.

And as macabre as it is, suicides are objective facts mostly unaffected by methodology, and unaffected by translation issues, cultural differences, etc.

This is why suicide rates are actually a powerful mental health statistic, just like height is a powerful physical health statistic, at the population level. There's obviously still a lot both of these metrics don't say, but the fact that they are highly objective makes them extremely valuable.

Comment by jampekka 17 hours ago

The World Happiness Report discusses this:

"The large variations in the systems and processes to define mortality causes imply there may be very different numbers of deaths that are registered with a specific cause. This creates a problem for cross-country comparisons of mortality by cause in general, and even more so for deaths of despair, and suicides in particular.

The person responsible for writing the cause of death on the death certificate may be different across countries. In some countries, the police are responsible, while in others a medical doctor, coroner, or judicial investigator takes on this role. Differences in doctors’ training, access to medical records, and autopsy requirements contribute to these discrepancies. The legal or judicial systems that decide causes of death also vary. For instance, in some countries suicide is illegal and is not listed as a classifiable cause of death, leading to underreporting or misclassification of suicides as accidents, violence, or deaths of “undetermined intent.”[25]

Data on suicides, even when reported, can be inaccurate due to social factors as well. In some countries, suicide might be taboo and highly stigmatised, so the families and friends of the person who committed suicide might decide to misreport or not disclose the mortality cause, causing underreporting of its incidence. In other societies, such as Northern Europe, there is less stigma attached to suicides, and alcohol and drug use."

https://www.worldhappiness.report/ed/2025/supporting-others-...

Comment by williamdclt 5 hours ago

> if you assume all countries follow the same type of happiness distribution that is simply shifted/stretched lower or higher.

That's a pretty strong assumption, seems more likely that there's variation at the extremes than not. For example, if a small percentage of the population deals badly with extended nighttime in long winters, then it'll affect Finland's most-unhappy stats (and suicide rates) without meaning much for the average happiness.

Comment by andreasgl 18 hours ago

> And as macabre as it is, suicides are objective facts mostly unaffected by methodology, and unaffected by translation issues, cultural differences, etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if cultural differences are actually the largest factor that explains a country's suicide rate. Not easy to prove, of course, but I would be very careful drawing any conclusions from differences in suicide rates between countries with vastly different cultures.

I think you can also expect large differences in how countries report their suicide rates.

Comment by mekoka 15 hours ago

I won't go into too much details on the topic, as it's loaded with triggering elements. Let's just say that if you were to study how different cultures apprehend and conceptualize life and death (whether philosophically or religiously), I'm fairly sure that you'd come out the other end questioning a lot of your original assumptions (which I only presume you hold based on your comment). Our collective outlook can have significant and far reaching influence in individual decisions.

Comment by BartjeD 18 hours ago

Suicides are hugely affected by cultural norms. In certain Asian cultures this has quite the history, so this can't be a correct assumption.

Comment by Karrot_Kream 18 hours ago

Most Asian cultures with suicide problems acknowledge and try very hard to bring those rates down. It isn't just a cultural norm and is in fact a good indicator of the happiness of a population.

Comment by RamblingCTO 8 hours ago

QoL certainly has its effect on suicide rates. I assume that life is the shittier, the more people opt to leave on their own terms. Just look at russia, absolute shithole and it's on rank 11.

If people are happy, you have less suicides. I don't need a study for that.

Comment by bendtb 20 hours ago

There is also a religious element to suicide that cannot be overlooked.

Also, I Spain your view of Spain is tainted. I think very few people would choose an average city in Spain over e.g. Copenhagen where 20% of the Danish population live.

Comment by GoatOfAplomb 20 hours ago

All the Spanish cities I've visited have looked "perfect", but there's a lot I don't see as a tourist, e.g. that Spain has one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe (10.5%).

Comment by PLMUV9A4UP27D 19 hours ago

Finland is now close to Spain when it comes to unemployment rate! Let's see how that affects Finland's ranking.

Comment by euroderf 8 hours ago

> There is also a religious element to suicide that cannot be overlooked.

Also a genetic component.

Comment by nephihaha 6 hours ago

Dark winters are a bigger component here. Most Nordic countries get little sun in winter and it gets worse the further north you are.

Comment by euroderf 6 hours ago

Finland leads the world in per capita coffee consumption. My pet theory is that in the winter it fights depression, and in the summer the sun is out late at night and you're saying to your friends: How could we possibly go to sleep now?! Moar coffee!!

Comment by nephihaha 5 hours ago

I tend to find coffee increases jitteriness and anxiety in people. Some evidence it may increase depression too.

Comment by euroderf 4 hours ago

Well, maybe not so much fight depression as fight lethargy ?

Comment by nephihaha 3 hours ago

In my experience, even that is not true. It displaces it.

Comment by socalgal2 18 hours ago

Have you eaten everyday food (not gourmet) in Copenhagen?

Comment by simonask 15 hours ago

Copenhageners eat the same plastic-wrapped salads, organic grass-fed whatever, and whatever the latest green smoothie trend is, as in Southern California.

If this is a dig at the largely pork/cabbage/potato-based diet of Northern Europe, you will be relieved to hear they don’t follow it.

Source: Am one.

Comment by alephnerd 20 hours ago

The perception of Spain is much more positive in the Anglophone world - it's viewed as a country where cost of living is low, you can nap in the middle of the day, the women/men are hot and easy, the wine is great and cheap, and you can party late at night.

In reality the average Spaniard isn't experience the majority of that, as those are perceptions that arose from the rose-tinted glasses of tourists. Most tourists don't know about the Eurozone crisis, the regional disparity, and the consolidation of Spain's economic growth engines to 1-2 cities.

Spain is a good developed country with a decent QoL as is reflected by it's HDI and developmental indicators (and the fact that it has outpaced historically richer and more developed Italy is a testament to that), but tourists almost always take a rose-tinted view whereas locals almost always take a negative view.

And I think this is the crux of the issue with how the "World Happiness Index" is used in American discourse - in the US almost no one vists Europe or other parts of the World for extended periods of time and most Americans lack familial or social ties in Europe. As such, idealized images of Europe ("a socialist paradise" or "white Christendom under siege") have taken hold in popular discourse and are used as proxies for the American culture war.

Comment by vjk800 19 hours ago

> The perception of Spain is much more positive in the Anglophone world - it's viewed as a country where cost of living is low, you can nap in the middle of the day, the women/men are hot and easy, the wine is great and cheap, and you can party late at night.

If you're a tourist, you get to experience only those parts. If you live there, you have to experience the other 99% of the life also and it's not so great.

Comment by alephnerd 18 hours ago

Did you even read the second sentence?

Comment by phony-account 19 hours ago

These measures are bullshit and often just come down to a prevalent societal ‘temperament’ that’s inculcated from birth. I live and have family in Sweden and the rest of my family is in Spain. The Swedes have immense pride in their country and pretty much only talk about the positives. When the winters are dark, cold, rain has been pouring for fourteen days straight and the last time you saw sun was 4 weeks ago, they say “there’s no bad weather just bad clothes”. One day I sat with my cousin and some other relatives in the olive grove of his country place in Spain - sun was shining and we’d been eating delicious locally produced food for hours and drinking wine from his vineyard while he yapped on about how everything in Spain is ‘shit’ (una mierda). And this is why places like Finland are reportedly the ‘happiest’ in the world.

Comment by pezezin 8 hours ago

I am Spanish and I agree with your comment. Sadly we love to hate our country, I guess we still have a lot of guilt accumulated from Franco's era.

In my case, the cure was traveling and living abroad for 7 years now, it made me realize that Spain is actually a great country.

Comment by oldestofsports 19 hours ago

We’ve had about 1 hour of sunlight so far in december where i live in Finland, but it’s fine. It also makes the sun way more enjoyable when it finally shines in the summer.

I’d never want to live in perpetual summer. Seasons brings joy.

Comment by haritha-j 5 hours ago

I'm from Sri Lanka, and i'm glad you're 'happy' with it, but i'll take my eternal sunshine over months of darkness anyday.

Comment by phony-account 7 hours ago

> I’d never want to live in perpetual summer. Seasons brings joy

Even this is a typical myth that I often hear from Scandinavians. In fact different parts of Spain (or England or France) have also clearly demarcated seasons.

If you want to experience the joy of Autumn then the crisp, long days of an English Fall are incomparably more distinct than the unrelenting darkness that’s almost indistinguishable from Winter in Scandinavia, for instance. And when Spring comes to the valleys of the temperate regions of Spain, then the blossom and explosion of wild flowers is miraculous.

But like I said, from preschool onwards Scandinavians are indoctrinated with the belief that they live in the best of all possible worlds, and no amount of actual experience can ever dent that notion.

Comment by arethuza 6 hours ago

Not sure that "crisp" is a word I'd use to describe any part of the UK in autumn - probably more like "soggy" - but that applies to any season!

Comment by phony-account 5 hours ago

> Not sure that "crisp" is a word I'd use to describe any part of the UK in autumn - probably more like "soggy" - but that applies to any season!

From the gently self-deprecating nature of your answer I’m guessing you’re British - and this is indeed the whole point of what I’m saying.

I genuinely and deeply miss this aspect of the English character which is totally lacking in Sweden - the websites called “shitLondon” or the insistence that English food is inferior to Italian or French cuisine or this repeated idea that it always rains (it doesn’t). That self-mockery simply doesn’t exist here, apart from when it’s some sort of humble-brag.

Comment by SiempreViernes 16 hours ago

To be fair, nothing in Sweden can match the flooding of Valencia.

Comment by parineum 9 hours ago

I don't see how that makes the measure bullshit. Outlook and expectations are related to happiness. If you want for nothing but have little it's better than a never ending treadmill of more.

Having a culture that produces happier people in worse circumstances doesn't make those people less happy.

Comment by phony-account 7 hours ago

> Having a culture that produces happier people in worse circumstances doesn't make those people less happy

The question is whether stoicism in the face of what most people would categorize as suffering should be classified as “happiness”.

Comment by refurb 3 hours ago

Even if the question was perfectly unbiased and captured happiness, comparing scores from country to country are impossible because the scale differs from country to country.

A 10 in Afghanistan is not the same as a 10 in Canada. Societies have different perception of “the best” based on each individuals experience, what society values and what they think is possible.

So while helpful in tracking happiness over time within the same country, it can’t be used to compare countries.

Comment by silisili 19 hours ago

Not for nothing, but I'm not sure that's a great metric. Venezuela for instance is 178, and it doesn't seem like an overly happy place to be these past few years.

Comment by nephihaha 6 hours ago

In Venezuela people are told to be happy.

Comment by BurningFrog 19 hours ago

Note that people who commit suicide don't answer surveys anymore.

Comment by flexie 9 hours ago

The Substack post takes a rather childish approach by confusing happiness with smiling and laughter.

Personal safety, good health, financial stability, access to education, job security, low stress, and strong family and social ties do not necessarily make people smile or laugh. They create a sense of contentment. That is precisely where Scandinavian countries excel.

Comment by phyzix5761 8 hours ago

I agree but does the happiness report actually measure all of that with their single question:

Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to ten at the top. Suppose we say that the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. If the top step is 10 and the bottom step is 0, on which step of the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?

Comment by williamdclt 5 hours ago

Yes? "The best possible life" covers pretty much exactly these socioeconomic factors for most people. Is there any of these factors that you think is not covered by this question?

Comment by PLMUV9A4UP27D 19 hours ago

A Finn here. And just as many other finns, I'm confused to why Finland ranks at the top. Yet, this seems like a case of someone looking to disprove a theory and thus finds the arguments. For example; Health metrics isn't a good measure, considering that Scandinavia has free health care, and this leads to more cases of mental health issues are recorded. Suicides aren't a great metric either, considering that Swedes and Finns have fairly high level of access to guns. I do agree that happiness is a term that is difficult to define, and that "happiness" is a bit misleading. "Content" is a better description.

Also, I think it's easy to misunderstand the Finns from the surface of us. We don't exhibit happiness, and we don't express happiness in a way that is easily observed. Finland ranks at the top of trust in other people, and being one of the least corrupt countries in the world. Those two metrics are a hint into how we Finns relate to other people. Also, it's difficult to get to know Finns, and for this reason it's difficult for outsiders to understand the Finns and the mentality.

On the anecdotal side, earlier this year I solo-traveled the US for 4 weeks, and out of those I got into deeper conversations, I was struck by how sad people were. That made me more convinced that I live a very happy life, in a happy place.

Edit: Some references: Weapons per capita: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g... Corruption index: https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024 Trust in others: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-where-people-trust-e...

Comment by bflesch 19 hours ago

Also regarding "comparison of suicide numbers", in many religious regions suicide is a problem for your soul and therefore a problem for your still-living relatives.

So there is a huge incentive for religious societies to let a family member's suicide appear like an accident. Suicide rates are an extension of mental health disease rates and extremely hard to compare without correcting for many factors.

Comment by cosmic_cheese 19 hours ago

That fuzzy line that sits between happiness and contentment is worth some exploration. For some the two are one and the same but for others “happiness” represents something closer to a perpetual Disney-movie-good-ending sort of emotional state that I suspect is broadly speaking unrealistic. I wonder how much sadness has stemmed from chasing that unattainable ideal.

Comment by PLMUV9A4UP27D 19 hours ago

You have a good point. I was about to write something about that in my previous point, like "Finns have a ladder that is lowers than others", but it didn't sound right. You put it with better words.

Comment by arethuza 6 hours ago

"We don't exhibit happiness, and we don't express happiness in a way that is easily observed"

I would far rather live somewhere where people look unhappy but are actually pretty content with life than somewhere where people feel compelled to look happy even though they are actually feeling pretty miserable.

But then again I am an aging Scot so I'm biased. ;-)

Edit: I'm also just back from a visit to Finland.

Comment by euroderf 8 hours ago

As a Murrcan greybeard now having lived more than half my life in Finland, I agree with your second-paragraph observations on the people and the mentality.

The level of societal trust here is still very high. I say "still" because methinks Western media and social media serve to erode such things. My 0.01€, YMMV.

Comment by nxor 19 hours ago

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Comment by BurningFrog 20 hours ago

As a Swede, I've always been confused by these results. The self image of Swedes is that we're fairly miserable on average, and don't know how to enjoy life as much as some people in warmer climates.

That said, note that both things mentioned in here will raise average happiness:

> But it turns out that the residents of the same Scandinavian countries that the press dutifully celebrates for their supposed happiness are especially likely to take antidepressants or even to commit suicide.

Comment by marginalia_nu 19 hours ago

I think (as a fellow Swede) that there is a culturally sense of guilt involved in having a comparatively comfortable life and not being happy about it, compounded by a sense of guilt that a comfortable life is somehow undeserved.

Saying you are unhappy is in a sense saying you need a better quality of life, or deserve more happiness, both of which are kind of taboo under the Law of Jante.

Comment by rodrigodlu 19 hours ago

As an introvert living in Rio de Janeiro, I can tell you that a lot of being happier in a hot climate with a lot of people around is just a social mask.

When I start deep questions about financial safety, the future and so on, just by asking I can be labelled as a pessimist. And I'm far from that.

I'm a fairly resolved and confident introvert, but I know many timid people that feel ashamed that they don't feel "happy" in these large group of people, that are extremely agitated and yelling around to grab some piece of attention they need.

And what is being shown in social media, documentaries and etc is just one pov.

Comment by PLMUV9A4UP27D 19 hours ago

It's a good point about living in a hot climate often being associated with living a happy life. Although to what I've seen, there isn't much evidence for such a correlation.

Comment by BurningFrog 17 hours ago

Simple theory:

In a warm climate you see people walking around feeling comfortable.

In a cold climate, the people you see are freezing.

Comment by bluGill 14 hours ago

People are not freezing in a cold climate - they have plenty of coats on. In hot climates you run out of clothes to take off - even nudists.

Comment by beautiful_zhixu 4 hours ago

Well I feel cold in winter sometimes even with a coat on. It hurts when I go outside, so I stay inside more, but if I stay inside too much, it hurts.

The point about hot environments is true, but people are not anxious and your body rarely hurts. They are lazy and their minds blank out. It is often too hot to do anything except try to scam anxious northerners and move away from mosquitos.

Comment by nephihaha 6 hours ago

Same issue I have... The Nordic countries have high rates of alcoholism and depression (partly due to low sunlight in winter). They do or did have some things right, but it is questionable whether those still exist. Why are they continually claimed as happy?

Comment by screye 17 hours ago

There are no material conditions that would convince me to live in a cold, dark and culturally introverted place. Anecdotally, my tropical peers agree with this opinion. Seasonal affective disorder plays an outsized role in my ability to like a place. On the flip side, I've heard many people describe living in warm & humid weather as torture.

My point is, aggregating factors for happiness to find the best country is like aggregating people's favorite colors to find the best color. Each individual's needs and circumstances are unique, and what will make them happy will vary widely as those needs and circumstances vary.

Some interesting (suspect?) findings from the quoted 2023 paper: (2008 - 2017 data)

* Somaliland had the 4th least worries

* Russians were the 7th least angry

* Chinese were the 8th best rested

* Icelanders did great on every metric, but felt very tired (rank 190)

* Venezuelans smiled the 12th most (Panama, Paraguay, Costa Rica did even better)

* Laotians smile the 3rd most, but are also among the angriest (202) !!?

Comment by typs 10 hours ago

I grew up in a very warm place, then moved to a very cold place and was miserable. I’d never done a winter and every year I was deeply unhappy for huge spans of the year.

But then I moved to Denmark from that cold place and found myself very happy! Of course circumstances change and a single account means little but I definitely believe some societies lend themselves to greater happiness than others, even in the very developed world.

Comment by adolph 17 hours ago

> Laotians smile the 3rd most, but are also among the angriest

From "Be Careful Where You Smile: Culture Shapes Judgments of Intelligence and Honesty of Smiling Individuals"

  Although numerous studies confirm that positive perceptions of smiling 
  individuals seem to be universal, anecdotal evidence suggests that in some 
  cultures the opposite may be true. For example, a well-known Russian proverb 
  says ‘Улыбкa, бeз пpичины - пpизнaк дypaчины’ (smiling with no reason is a 
  sign of stupidity). The Norwegian government humorously explains nuances of 
  Norwegian culture by indicating that when a stranger on the street smiles at 
  Norwegians, they may assume that the stranger is insane

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4840223/

Comment by didgetmaster 16 hours ago

There is an old saying that you are as happy as you choose to be. While some people have experienced very challenging circumstances and have trouble feeling happy; most miserable people are that way because they let little things get in the way of their happiness.

There are rich, healthy, popular people who feel awful. They might feel like a failure because they are constantly comparing themselves with more successful people (or at least believe all the wonderful posts on social media). They might immerse themselves in negative thoughts about the world and their own immediate surroundings.

But if you are always counting your blessings and trying to serve people who are less fortunate; you might realize that 'It's a Wonderful Life'.

Comment by jampekka 19 hours ago

The World Happiness Report extensively discusses positive and negative affect in Chapter 2 and the relatively high suicide/death of despair rates of the Nordic countries in Chapter 6. These seem to be totally ignored in TFA.

https://www.worldhappiness.report/ed/2025/caring-and-sharing...

https://www.worldhappiness.report/ed/2025/supporting-others-...

Comment by dang 20 hours ago

Related. Others?

U.S. hits new low in World Happiness Report - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45378896 - Sept 2025 (277 comments)

U.S. No Longer Ranks Among 20 Happiest Countries - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39763595 - March 2024 (92 comments)

The Finnish Secret to Happiness? Knowing When You Have Enough - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35411641 - April 2023 (19 comments)

World Happiness Report 2023 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35230812 - March 2023 (2 comments)

World Happiness Report, 2019 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19615776 - April 2019 (60 comments)

Why Denmark dominates the World Happiness Report rankings year after year - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16720551 - March 2018 (3 comments)

Happiness report: Norway is the happiest place on earth - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13913145 - March 2017 (158 comments)

World Happiness Report 2015 [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10793969 - Dec 2015 (22 comments)

Denmark 'happiest' country in the world - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=234018 - July 2008 (1 comment)

---

Bonus highlight: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5152494 (Feb 2013)

Comment by rdtsc 19 hours ago

> At a minimum, you would expect the happiest countries in the world to have some of the lowest incidences of adverse mental health outcomes. But it turns out that the residents of the same Scandinavian countries that the press dutifully celebrates for their supposed happiness are especially likely to take antidepressants or even to commit suicide.

Exactly. WHR is a wonderful tool to study how policy institutes and media work together to build a narrative over the years.

One issue identified in the article that in some countries that really isn't taken to mean happiness, it's taken to mean "wealth". My take is simple that someone locked in a cage for the rest of their life without a chance to escape can still confidently put a 10 down. The cage may very well be golden, so it doesn't say much about their absolute happiness or suffering so to speak. Another situation is a person who sees more achievable opportunity - "if I can do x, y, z, I'll be higher on the ladder". Then they'd report themselves low, because they see a path to reach higher. But in the report they'll just look like the saddest person ever.

Comment by albumen 17 hours ago

This comprehensive response/rebuttal [1] buried in the article’s comments, by one of the authors of the World Happiness Report, is worth reading. One of the most interesting points is how subjective well-being indicators predict people’s voting behavior: “…in 2016 US presidential elections, subjective well-being indicators - especially Cantril Ladder now and expected Cantril Ladder in five years - measured on a county level predicted voting for Trump better than any county-level economic indicator.” The unhappier people were, the more likely they voted for Trump.

Also, it links to a report on why Nordic countries tend to perform so well on life evaluation indicators: “ the most prominent explanations include factors related to the quality of institutions, such as reliable and extensive welfare benefits, low corruption, and well-functioning democracy and state institutions. Furthermore, Nordic citizens experience a high sense of autonomy and freedom, as well as high levels of social trust towards each other, which play an important role in determining life satisfaction. On the other hand, we show that a few popular explanations for Nordic happiness such as the small population and homogeneity of the Nordic countries, and a few counterarguments against Nordic happiness such as the cold weather and the suicide rates, actually don’t seem to have much to do with Nordic happiness.”

[1] https://open.substack.com/pub/yaschamounk/p/the-world-happin...

Comment by zkmon 19 hours ago

Unless it includes Sentinel islands, I'm not going to spend any reading minutes on those reports.

Comment by foobar1962 15 hours ago

> ..the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you... on which step of the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?

10, I'm living my best possible life. It's conceivable that my "best possible life" may not be as happy as the lifes of other people, but I have achieved the maximum that's possible for me.

Any other "possible life" would require some combination of different genes, being in a different place and living at a different time.

Comment by bluGill 14 hours ago

I see a high mark as a sign you lack the ability to dream. I can imangine living in a mansion with my own personal hockey rink, and dozens of other weird luxuries that I could never afford (and realistically wouldn't use often if at all). Just the difference between that dream and my normal suburban house lowers me to a three. I can think of lots of non house things my best possible life would have - not all are even physically possible and many others are not moral (a few dozen wives who are devoted only to me)

Comment by foobar1962 13 hours ago

Really? Satisfied people lack the ability to dream?

Comment by bluGill 11 hours ago

They dream, but it is a different type of dream.

Comment by kjuulh 8 hours ago

From the provided question by WHR I can definitely see how Scandinavian countries rank so high. Being Danish myself my answer would immediately go into long term thinking and whether I would have a better life elsewhere and to me the answer is a clear no. Not financially, socially or politically. So yes, Denmark scores really high, but is it really measuring happiness. I dont know. That said I dont think measuring how often we laugh as a better metric amongst other thing, I can be perfectly "happy" without being outwardly joyous, maybe contentment is a better word. Or well being. But it isn't as catchy i guess

Comment by euroderf 7 hours ago

Hmm perhaps US Declaration of Independence could have cited "certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Contentment".

Comment by nephihaha 6 hours ago

Denmark is probably the best out of these countries in terms of winter (excluding Greenland and the Faroes), but the others get very little sunlight in winter, and have historical alcohol problems.

Comment by dang 20 hours ago

As Garrison Keillor said about the Nordics: "We Lutherans are an optimistic people—our glass is half empty and we're grateful for it."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5152494

Comment by owenversteeg 17 hours ago

I can't stand the conflation of "satisfied" and "happy." It's insane. There is more happiness in one Zimbabwean (country "happiness" rank: 143) than in one hundred Icelanders (country "happiness" rank: 2, worldwide antidepressant consumption rank: 1.) Go stand in a crowd of people and count the fucking smiles and the fucking laughter.

It is all part of this broader wave of newspeak. If you can quite literally redefine happiness, you can redefine anything. Nothing has meaning anymore. You will live alone, you will consume antidepressants, you will be protected from the sunlight, you will not smile, you will not laugh, and you will be happy.

Comment by lioeters 9 hours ago

This hits the nail on the head. The happiest people I've met in my life, and I've been literally around the world, are in some of the poorest "developing" countries. Their basic needs were met, food and shelter, at least for the day. But they didn't have much more, except their friends, family, and the nature around them - forests, rivers, mountains and ocean.

The saddest people I've seen were in the richest countries, like the U.S. and Germany. Yes, the homeless population, I've met them too - but more surprisingly, the wealthy ruling class. They've conquered the land, covered it with concrete and asphalt, colonized their own public, produce and broadcast mass media entertainment, and command the largest militaries. Yet their culture has clearly devolved and degenerated, propped up by drugs, cosmetic surgery, nice clothes, nice houses, nice cars. But it's not enough to fill that emptiness inside.

It's a simplification of course, there are many very miserable poor people, that's the base majority of humanity, on whom the pyramid of modern civilization is built. But I have no respect for those at the top, the self-styled kings of today. They're deeply unhappy people who are not fit to lead the world, much less themselves.

Comment by arethuza 6 hours ago

"the wealthy ruling class"

What always surprises me is that a lot of the most comfortably well off people in the US, and a lesser extend the UK, seem to live in a state of perennial fear.

Comment by deaux 12 hours ago

I agree. I'm interested to hear other's thoughts on happiness without contention vs contention without happiness. To me, the former "feels" preferable, but I'm not sure whether it actually is.

Comment by nitwit005 18 hours ago

I just can't feel confident in any form of self report. In a world where people have difficulty getting their spouses and children to talk honestly about their feelings, how well do we think a survey can do?

It varies wildly by culture, but we're all conditioned somewhat to falsely report our feelings. I don't expect an honest answer if I greet someone with "How are you doing?".

Comment by SiempreViernes 16 hours ago

> I just can't feel confident in any form of self report

How do you decide what to eat when you are out with friends if asking them for their opinion is out?

Or do you ask but then spend all night afterwards worrying that maybe they lied and you should have gone for tacos instead?

Seems exhausting, why not trust people a little?

Comment by nitwit005 12 hours ago

People admit they lie on surveys. There have, somewhat ironically, been surveys about this: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-29206289

I'm afraid struggles with dishonesty about what they want to eat is a somewhat common relationship problem: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/sydaj0/w...

Comment by briandw 20 hours ago

No kidding. I lived in Finland for a few years and no way are they some of the happiest people.

Comment by IAmBroom 20 hours ago

Whom are you replying to? The only other comment I see about Finland agrees with the take that they are happiest.

Comment by estomagordo 20 hours ago

The author would do well to educate themselves on the difference between Scandinavia and the Nordics.

Comment by oldestofsports 18 hours ago

It doesn’t matter. Finland is often included when talking about Scandinavia, which in modern days just makes sense culturally. There’s no value in trying to cling to the ”histprically correct” meaning of a particular term. Languages evolve, dictionaries change.

Comment by 6 hours ago

Comment by estomagordo 18 hours ago

"evolve" meaning "diluted because lots of people are dumb"

Comment by rendall 9 hours ago

Addressed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46298857

Comment by paulsutter 19 hours ago

Normalizing for language and culture seem like the hardest parts of any global survey. How are the translations done of that one question and are there any cultural implications?

Comment by looperhacks 7 hours ago

Does anybody take the World Happiness Report that serious? I think it's a neat and funny thing that probably has some footing in reality, but I never thought of it as hard science.

Comment by Hamuko 9 hours ago

>The happiest countries in the world are in Scandinavia; this year, Finland is followed by Denmark, Iceland and Sweden.

Finland and Iceland are not in Scandinavia. Iceland is in fact an island quite far removed from the peninsula.

Comment by rendall 9 hours ago

There is no coherent principle that that cleanly includes Denmark, Norway, and Sweden while excluding Finland. Not geography, language, religion, culture or history.

Finland is not on the Scandinavian Peninsula, but it is physically contiguous with Sweden and Norway and deeply integrated into the same northern European ecological, economic, and transport space. If peninsulas are the criterion, then Denmark is already a special pleading exception.

Finland is officially bilingual, Swedish is a national language, and Swedish is historically entrenched in Finnish administration, law, and elites. Meanwhile Finnish is spoken by a large minority in Sweden. So language does not draw a clean boundary.

Lutheranism dominates across Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland.

Finnish culture is distinct in some ways, but so is Icelandic relative to Denmark, and Norwegian relative to Swedish. Distinctiveness exists inside the supposed core as much as between core and periphery.

Finland was part of the Swedish realm for centuries, was governed through the same institutions, and emerged into modernity shaped by the same legal and administrative traditions.

Comment by euroderf 7 hours ago

As an aside, Finns have said to me that in general Finland is open to adopting political & economic ideas from Sweden, letting Sweden be at the leading edge, with the caveat that first Sweden tries them out... and IF they work they might be cribbed by Finland.

I don't know whether this attitude still prevails tho.

Comment by 4ndrewl 20 hours ago

I guess kudos for doing a deep dive into this, but was it necessary?

Aren't all of these types of things (unhappiest day of the year, best day to be born on, age that we're happiest etc) clearly pseudo-scientific/scientistic babble - and brands can then just use them to sell the Scandi (or whatever) lifestyle. Nobody who believes this is going to be swayed by your anaylsis. :)

Comment by itsdrewmiller 20 hours ago

Should outlets like the NYT be reporting uncritically on pseudoscience? As long as they are I think this kind of work is extremely valuable.

Comment by staticman2 20 hours ago

The survey being used was created by a Princeton University psychology professor. It may or may not be useful but there's nothing obviously pseudo-scientific about it. I do not think the linked article writer is making that claim.

Comment by Analemma_ 20 hours ago

Yes, it's necessary, and getting more so all the time: lately I've been seeing more and more commentary trying to tie happiness measurements to some political stance: "conservatives are happier than liberals", "women are happier after divorce", etc. And increasingly it's not coming just from random commenters, but from people with real power.

In such an environment it's vital to know if the methodology for measuring happiness is good or bunk.

Comment by griffzhowl 20 hours ago

How much of the article did you read? The main substance of it is not that the UN rankings are flawed, but how the rankings change based on the broader analysis by Blanchflower and Bryson. That result can't so easily be read off from our cynical preconceptions

Comment by logifail 19 hours ago

> To put it bluntly, it is a sham

I suspect there may be a pattern, every time I hear on the radio that it's "World $x Day" I'm afraid I start wondering who's actually behind that specific press release and/or what funding and incentives are really in play...

Comment by 18 hours ago

Comment by drloewi 14 hours ago

But that just means the Cantril ladder is a good outcome variable — the WHR is in fact profoundly flawed, but the important flaws are in the predictors they use to “explain” (their word) the outcomes. They’re hand-picked, they’re over a decade old which is well before the majority of their own data was collected, they’re not even consistent with the report itself, and when they talk about them in public (I was at the 2025 launch party), they don’t even take them seriously, as if they know it’s not meaningful — and yet they continue to be the single largest data product of the report, every single year.

And this is critical. Who’s #1 is always in the headlines but Why is far more important than Rank. We don’t really care who has the best life — we want to know how we can get a better life. Yet most of the predictable conversation — here, but also literally on stage at Gallup — is just total speculation about the real answer, while sitting in front of 20 years of data. This is insane.

Which is why I’ve spent three years building a better model, starting from a base of 180x more variables, and using objective methods of computational variable selection instead of just deciding what I think should make people happy — because that’s self-evidently just inexcusably bad science. The result is measurably more accurate than the WHR. White paper is here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5655570

Tl:dr; Basic Needs, (Local and Global) Social Support, and (Local and Global) Self-Determination describe almost all of the findings, but many of the specific variables that emerge as the strongest predictors are things like LGBTQ+ social acceptance, women in white collar jobs, and meaningful, democratically accessible political power. Which just aren’t in the WHR model. The lessons to take, and the direction it points, are just in a profoundly different direction.

This is the real flaw of the WHR — it doesn’t actually show us how to make the world better.

Footnote: The Cantril ladder has now been used for literally 60 years, and new major studies continue to choose it as their outcome measure, because 60 years of research have demonstrated it is stable, meaningful, intuitive, and consistently understood across languages, cultures, and geographies. Plus it’s 1. self-reported, 2. all-encompassing, 3. single-scale, and 4. quantitative, all of which are unavoidable properties of a usable outcome, so even if the wording changes somewhat, any worthwhile question is going to look, basically, like it. And yes the tangled use of “happiness” vs “satisfaction” is stupid, misleading, and inconsistent, but when you just accept that one is the correct version and one is the PR version, you eventually get over it.

Comment by drloewi 14 hours ago

The WHR is in fact profoundly flawed — but for a completely different reason.

I read this critique when it came out, although you can really stop at the part where he claims that it's flawed because it's self-reported. This just totally, fundamentally, misses the point, and value, of the study. Do you think you should decide how good your life is? Or do you think I should decide how good your life is? Mounk appears to think he should be the one deciding (which is what you’re doing when you manufacture an “objective” version, rather than believing the provided answer). This is the deeper, and fatal, problem with his complaints. (The critique of the Ladder as being biased towards fame and fortune sounds important, until you actually model satisfaction and find that those variables just aren’t the dominant predictors.)

Which is why I’ve spent three years building a better model, starting from a base of 180x more variables, and using error-driven methods of computational variable selection instead of just deciding what I think should make people happy — because that’s self-evidently just inexcusably bad science. The result is measurably more accurate than the WHR. White paper is here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5655570

This is the real flaw of the WHR — it doesn’t actually show us how to make the world better.

Footnote, based on the conversation: The Cantril ladder has now been used for literally 60 years, and new major studies continue to choose it as their outcome measure, because 60 years of research have demonstrated it is stable, meaningful, intuitive, and consistently understood across languages, cultures, and geographies. Plus it’s 1. self-reported, 2. all-encompassing, 3. single-scale, and 4. quantitative, all of which are unavoidable properties of a usable outcome, so even if the wording changes somewhat, any worthwhile question is going to look, basically, like it. And yes the tangled use of “happiness” vs “satisfaction” is stupid, misleading, and inconsistent, but when you just accept that one is the correct version and one is the PR version, you eventually get over it.

Comment by timonofathens 8 hours ago

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Comment by didgetmaster 1 day ago

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Comment by gweinberg 13 hours ago

I don't understand why anyone thinks self-reported happiness scores mean anything at all. I don't see how they possibly could. If someone says he's a 10 on his personal scale I guess that means he can't imagine being much happier, but I don't see how that means he's particularly happy.

Comment by autoexec 20 hours ago

Happiness is a purely subjective thing. It's plainly obvious that any attempt at such comparisons will be doomed to be of limited utility. There are plenty of other ways you could try to go about getting something more useful, but none of them will be perfect.

The good news is that we don't need a perfect happiness report to think about the things various countries are either doing very well or very poorly and how our own lives might be changed if the place where we live did things differently. The World Happiness Reports gets attention year after year because it prompts that kind of thinking and there is value in that.