The ‘World Happiness Report 2023’ has been prepared by six independent experts associated with various Western universities based on data provided by Gallup Poll Survey and social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. ‘The Gallup World Poll’ was the principal source of data for this report, which collects responses from one thousand people each year per country and draws its conclusion based on its three-year average outcome.
The measurement of the well-being of the people of a country by ‘happiness index’, instead of GDP and Per Capita Income, is a welcome step as it banishes many anomalies of the GDP-based indicators of the well-being of the people. Since this report has been gaining popularity over the years, it is important to assess to what extent it reflects and captures the prevailing realities of the various countries.
Measuring the Immeasurable
Measuring the happiness level of the people of a country is difficult because happiness is the state of mind and heart, which is not tangible. Therefore, selecting appropriate variables gains heightened importance to avoid a fallacy in the outcome of indexation.
The happiness level of the people may be viewed in two ways. First is the persistence of those factors which make people of a country happy, and second is counting those factors which make them unhappy. So far as parameters of the World Happiness Report (WHR) are considered, it takes six parameters into account to measure people’s happiness levels. They are GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, freedom from corruption and generosity. Though broadly speaking, it appears to have considered both factors. Still, it certainly needs to add some parameters such as democracy, respect for diversity, endowment status of civil rights, suicide rate and the use of antidepressant drugs.
Cultural Bias in the Selection of Variables
While assessing a country, the most challenging task one assessor generally faces is creating equivalence in assessment parameters and populations. It means identifying factors is needed to be done in such a way that it should be equally relevant to all populations. Since the nature of the people and their way of expressing emotion vastly differs from Western society to Eastern ones, if the same parameters are applied to both societies, the outcome of the survey is bound to be misleading. It is no secret that people in Western countries are emotionally more expressive, but people in Eastern countries are less expressive. The cross-cultural differences in social norms and behaviours are considered to avoid skewed outcomes.
While assessing happiness, the factors that indicate unhappiness the people cannot be discounted. In this respect, ‘the rate of suicide’ and ‘incidence of divorce’ may be regarded as the most important indicators of unhappiness, as they destroy the happiness of a family. A higher rate of divorce and suicide (including attempted) are the best indicators of dissatisfaction and disharmony in the lives of the people of a country.
But this factor has been conveniently ignored by the happiness report team. Another important factor which acts as a spoiler of happiness is the incidence of crime. By disregarding these crucial factors, arbitrariness in the outcome of happiness substantially increased. So far, factors such as ‘the presence of a person in one’s life who can be counted upon in times of need’ also appear fragile. Had the WHR taken the presence of a cohesive family network and robustness of the family system as one of the most significant indicators of happiness instead of the presence of just a person as an indicator of happiness, the outcome of the indexation would have been different.
Reckless Ranking
It is no secret that the outcome of an indexation depends on the level of representativeness and comprehensiveness of the variables. By discounting some essential factors showing society’s unhappiness level, the WHR team made its finding highly questionable. For example, the ‘rate of suicide’ in a country has been ignored. A higher rate of suicide indicates a bad state of mental well-being, and a lower rate of suicide means a better state of mental well-being. As per the latest WHO report on suicide, South Korea, with a suicide rate of 28.6 persons per lakh, stands fourth on the list of the rate of suicide globally.
Similarly, South Africa, with 23.5 persons per lakh and the USA, with 16.1 persons per lakh, stands at 10th and 23rd, respectively. Whereas Finland, with a population of 15.3 persons per lakh population stands at 26th, Sweden, with 14.7, is ranked 28th, and Sri Lanka stands at 35th, with a rate of suicide of 14 persons per lakh. But India’s position in it is 38th, with a suicide rate of 12.7 persons per lakh.
Interestingly, the people of Brazil who were recently passing through civil unrest and turbulent political phases have been ranked at 49. Interestingly, Pakistan, where discontentment levels of the people are just unprecedented because of economic and political reasons, has been ranked at 108. Similarly, Iran and Sri Lanka, passing through civil unrest and a difficult economic situation, ranked 101 and 112, respectively. Interestingly, all the countries mentioned above have been ranked higher than India’s 126 in WHR.
Another important indicator of unhappiness is the use of antidepressant drugs. As per OECD data, in Sweden, the use of antidepressant drugs has risen from 45 in 2000 to 105 in 2020, and in Finland, which has been ranked at no.1 in WHR in the happiness index, it has risen from 36 to 82, defined daily dose per 1000 persons. There are many highly ranked countries of WHR in the top twenty consumers of antidepressant drugs, including the USA. The ranking of India at 126th position in WHR, which is outside the list of top twenty consumers of antidepressant drugs, is just puzzling.
These facts heavily dent the credibility of WHR and expose the level of arbitrariness in the ranking of countries.
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