Ever wondered how to better understand what drives well-being and what affects our daily lives? While we measure countries using economic indicators such as GDP, these were never designed to be comprehensive measures of well-being, therefore we must look beyond GDP. The World Happiness Report has been focusing their efforts for the past 9 years on understanding what influences the quality of our lives and how could we live longer, healthier and happier lives.
Happiness, trust and deaths under COVID-19: Highlights from the World Happiness Report 2020 (Chapter 2).
Ever wondered how to better understand what drives well-being and what affects our daily lives? While we measure countries using economic indicators such as GDP, these were never designed to be comprehensive measures of well-being, therefore we must look beyond GDP. The World Happiness Report has been focusing their efforts for the past 9 years on understanding what influences the quality of our lives and how could we live longer, healthier and happier lives.
The central purpose of the initial chapter of the World Happiness Report (Chapter 2) is to measure and use subjective well-being to track and explain the quality of lives all over the globe. In brief the results of the report show that our lives have been shaken to their core, but despite the adversities we've proven astonishing resilience.
Let’s start by replicating one of the studies measuring subjective well-being.
Imagine that this ladder is a way of picturing your life. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you. The bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. Indicate where you stand on the ladder at this time.
Are your results in line with the results from the World Happiness Report? The first step to implementing changes and improving our well-being is awareness.
Based on the average life evaluations, the 2020 ranking of happiness looks as follows:
Any surprises?
No question that our lives have changed during 2020 and as such our emotions have fluctuated throughout the year. The UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) has recently published a report that shows the variations across 4 areas: life satisfaction, anxiety, happiness yesterday and the extent to which people think that the things they do in their lives are worthwhile.
The results paint a worse picture for women than men with constant considerably higher levels of anxiety and a bigger drop throughout Q1 and Q2 2020 of life satisfaction and happiness. Nevertheless, women continue to score higher on life worthwhile, the least affected variable for both genders.
The somewhat surprising result is that despite COVID-19 being a threat especially for people above 60, this group has reported the highest life satisfaction, happiness, life worthwhile and the lowest levels of anxiety. Equally surprising is to see that the group age between 30-59 has reported the lowest life satisfaction and happiness and the highest levels of anxiety. On the same surprising note, the group under 30 has scored worse on life worthwhile.
These results shed a light on the areas of concerns overall when it comes to our population aged 30-59. We can't grow our children, care for our communities and sustain our economies if we can't take care of ourselves first.
Where would YOU rate yourself in these 4 categories at this moment?
Let me ask you another question. If you lost your wallet with € 200 in it, how likely is it that it will be returned by a neighbor a stranger or a police officer?
The answer to that question evidences the power of expected benevolence and trust.
If you think it’s very likely to be returned if found by either a neighbor or a stranger it has a positive effect more than twice the estimated negative effect of being unemployed or than having an income several times higher. Surprising, right? The reason a positive answer is so powerful is because returning a wallet requires a level of benevolence extending beyond basic trustworthiness since the finder has to go out of their way to return the wallet.
The expected wallet return by neighbors and strangers is a reliable measure of social capital, crucial for the coherence of the society. Social capital refers to the “glue” that keeps societies together in the form of shared norms, values and understanding. Several studies have proven that regions with high social capital have been more successful in reducing rates of infections and deaths as it facilitates cooperation and predisposition to help if you know others will also help.
Besides high social capital, institutional trust is also an important determinant of life evaluations and clear determinants of successful pandemic responses. Confidence in public institutions means that such societies will more easily accept the necessity of fast and sometimes painful measures and are personally more likely to follow policy advice and reach out to help others in their communities. This formula has proven to be the most successful in fighting COVID-19, as measured by 2020 rates of COVID deaths. This is likely to help them to be happier societies in 2021.
All in all, despite the increase in negative emotions such as sadness and worry, the overall life evaluations, and the happiness rankings, were very stable. Expected benevolence and trust along with institutional trust have been the key factors not only for higher happiness levels but also to get COVID-19 under control by facilitating more effective strategies for limiting the spread of the pandemic while maintaining and building a sense of common purpose.
While collecting the data in 2020 has proved a challenge with smaller sample sizes and potentially not reaching the most affected groups, this report is the most reliable source of aggregated data and insights into how people have coped during COVID-19, along with insights into how countries all over the globe have dealt with this pandemic.
Want to read more about the rest of the chapters? Follow me and stay tuned as I release a new article each week. The full report can be found on the World Happiness Report (WHR) website.
