The publication of the latest edition of the World Happiness Report on 20 March, which marks International Day of Happiness, sparked widespread interest and curiosity as it has done since its launch ten years ago.

The report ranks countries according to their achievements in terms of six variables: GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, societal generosity, social support systems, and perceptions of corruption.

The first report was released in 2013, when the UN General Assembly declared an International Day of Happiness dedicated to reviewing countries’ performance in promoting human happiness and well-being as key criteria for the success or failure of government policies.

The World Happiness Report is based on surveys conducted in 143 countries and prepared in collaboration with a team of researchers and in partnership with organisations like Gallup, which is famed for its worldwide surveys and opinion polls.

The approach follows a straightforward methodology, which is to ask people to assess how content they are with their lives. Individuals respond to a series of questions on a scale of zero to ten, with zero standing for totally miserable and ten for fully satisfied. The questions pertain to the various institutions, conditions, and other factors that combine to produce a happy life.

With few exceptions, the wealthiest members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have led the top 40 countries in the report based on the averages of survey results from 2021 to 2023. Only three Arab countries have appeared among the top 30 countries surveyed: Kuwait, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan ranks the lowest in the report, followed by Lebanon, Lesotho, Sierra Leone, and the Republic of the Congo.

Last year’s report included a ten-year anniversary study called “The Happiness Agenda: The Next Ten Years” by John Helliwell of the Vancouver School of Economics in Canada, the British economist Richard Layard, a professor at the London School of Economics, and the well-known US economist Jeffrey Sachs, a professor at Columbia University in New York and director of its Centre for Sustainable Development.

The Agenda compiled and analysed millions of surveys in which respondents gave zero to ten rankings on questions relating to the following factors: physical and mental health; human relations; income and employment; character virtues; social support; personal freedoms; the absence of corruption; and effective government.

The study confirmed a growing conviction among the public in the more comprehensive concept of well-being as the ultimate good. They also judge the development of their conditions not just according to their own level of well-being, but also according to the extent to which well-being is equitably distributed within their own generation and across generations.

The authors suggest that the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030 should be more closely linked to what it takes to realise the goal of human happiness.

This year’s World Happiness Report, which pays closer attention to age and generational factors, found some interesting discrepancies. For example, Lithuania ranks 19th on the Happiness Index overall, but it is ranked first among children and people under 30, and 44th among people aged 60 and over.

The US ranks tenth in the 60 years of age and over bracket in the Index but drops to 62nd for the 30 and under category. The authors attribute the decline in happiness among young people in the US and other developed countries to their exposure to upsetting and disturbing news and information, even though there may be no significant decline in the education, employment, and income factors.

The generational disparity is lower in countries such as Egypt, which received an overall ranking of 127 and in which the older generation gave a ranking of 124 and the under-30 bracket came in at 130.

I believe that an important gauge of happiness is the extent to which equal opportunities have been achieved in practice, as this relies on perceptions of contingent variables on which prevailing impressions have an impact. Moreover, changes that have affected the middle classes in many countries due to successive economic shocks go a long way to explaining lower happiness rankings.

The Misery Index, designed by the US economist Arthur Okun, is illuminating in this regard. It measures the impact of economic pressures on the average citizen based on the sum of the unemployment rate and the annual inflation rate. The Index was used extensively during the period of stagflation in the 1970s. The idea was that if the economy was deemed to be in good shape when the unemployment rate was close to what so called the natural rate of unemployment – say at three per cent – and the inflation target was two per cent, then the base figure would come to five per cent and any increase on that would signify a growth in misery in a society.

The Misery Index has shortcomings because it does not include other economic variables, such as growth and the impact of economic predictions on trends. It has since been modified by other economists, such as Robert Barro, who has used it to measure the performance of US presidents. It would be useful to include this index alongside other economic, social, and human development indicators in order to evaluate how government policies are faring and levels of public satisfaction.

As Richard Layard, one of the authors of the World Happiness Report, observes, the ultimate human aim should be to create a world in which people are happy with their lives and enjoy a sense of contentment and self-fulfillment.

It is no coincidence that the US Declaration of Independence affirms the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Layard also quotes the US’ third president, Thomas Jefferson, who said that “the care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.”

This article also appears in Arabic in Wednesday’s edition of Asharq Al-Awsat.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 4 April, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly