So Forbes magazine likes to do this once in a while — put out a survey on “The World’s Happiest People,” just to keep us all on our toes, wondering if we’re truly happy, respective of other countries, and if not, why not?
And usually the Philippines places very high on this type of survey. It is often said that Filipinos are among the happiest, most contented people on the planet. How do they do it? No one really knows. If you somehow possess the means to bottle that kind of whistle-in-the-dark optimism and sell it to the First World, I’d advise you to do so. At a very high price.
As it turns out, the happiest people in the world are not found in America, nor Europe, nor even the Philippines, according to Forbes, but in the following five countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands.
Really. Gallup researchers got out and polled folks in some 155 countries from 2005 to 2009 and found those living in the aforementioned northern European climes to be the happiest.
I don’t know. I just watched Babette’s Feast, the 1987 Danish film that takes place on the rocky coasts of Jutland, and the people there didn’t seem all too jolly. True, they were members of a strict Christian sect in the late 1800s, people for whom taking pleasure in a good meal is equivalent to inviting the devil into your very home, setting him up in your living room next to the fireplace, offering him a Cognac and telling him to take his shoes off and rest his tired dogs on your favorite Ottoman for a while. But still. Have things changed that much in Denmark? After all, it’s home to Lars von Trier and the Bard’s “melancholic Dane” from Hamlet. We have to conclude that things have perked up a bit since then.
Or how about Finland? Not much is known about Finland. It was once part of Sweden and became independent from Russia in 1917. Like Norway and Denmark, it has a relatively small population: around 5.5 million. It’s tempting, thus, to posit the theory that happiness rests largely on having a small population. Residents of places like Singapore may actually feel like they’re happier because they have more elbow room. Same goes for Norway, Denmark and Finland.
But this theory goes kablooey when you consider Sweden has about 9.4 million people, and the Netherlands has a population of 16.6 million. Not exactly take-over-the-world big, but certainly bigger than, say, Rhode Island.
It’s also tempting to suspect that Swedes consider themselves happier because of their much-discussed sexual freedom, or that the Netherlands is “happier” because of liberal soft drug laws. But the sexual revolution came and went decades ago, and the availability of drugs in Amsterdam is probably of keener interest to tourists than the local populace. So there have to be other reasons afoot.
True, too, the Gallup poll was taken before the Netherlands lost the 2010 World Cup Final to Spain, but one suspects even that crushing defeat isn’t enough to lower their happiness level too much.
I then looked at the five countries’ national flags, and noticed similarities: the cross taking up the left quadrant on several of them, with all these bright colors beneath. Maybe happiness rests on having a cheery flag. Or a cheery national anthem. Maybe the US — ranking a lowly 14th place — should get somebody to write a peppier anthem to sing at baseball games. Maybe hire somebody like Lady Gaga. Or Sean “Diddy” Combs. Or Burt Bacharach.
The survey results may baffle many who believe, mistakenly, that cold Scandinavian countries have the highest suicide rates. Not so, according to a 2008 World Health Organization study. The top five suicide capitals? Lithuania, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Japan, and Russia.
The Forbes article does offer us some clues. Not surprisingly, for a magazine concerned with charting wealth, it finds that these five geographically clustered countries are happier because they’re richer. As in, more prosperous. As in, very high per capita incomes. As in, they get 12 weeks of paid vacation a year, and socialized medical care, and enough safety nets to think twice before carping too much about their so-called “difficulties” in life.
I’ve read articles portraying Denmark as the kind of materially abundant society in which moms prefer to go out into the workplace, and dads just like to stay at home and look after the kiddies. You know, the old John Lennon/“househusband” routine. I think I could get used to that kind of lifestyle.
Here’s the methodology the Gallup people used. They asked folks to rank their general satisfaction with life on a scale from one to 10. Then they asked them to reflect on their “daily experiences” of life — things like whether they felt well-rested, pain-free, intellectually stimulated. If you rated yourself highly on both, you were considered to be “thriving.” If not… well, you know.
Here’s where it gets kind of weird though. The data for the countries included columns for “percentage thriving,” “percentage struggling,” “percentage suffering” and an overall “daily experience” number.
In case you’re wondering, the Philippines placed 94th in the survey.
In the Philippines, the “thriving” number was only 15 percent; the “struggling” numbered 68 percent; the “suffering” amounted to 18 percent. Yet the “daily experience” number charted a fairly peppy 7.2 percent. Note that there seems to be a disconnect between reported hardship and Filipinos’ perception of same.
Compare this to the US. Some 57 percent of Americans polled said they felt they were “thriving” (again, this was back in 2009; who knows where the numbers are now?); some 40 percent were reportedly “struggling,” but only three percent described themselves as actually “suffering.” Yet the US reported a “daily experience” number of only 7.7 out of 10, not that much higher than the Philippines.
This seems to correlate with another finding: that places without much material wealth still chart pretty high, happiness-wise, such as developing country Costa Rica, which ranked sixth. Forbes concluded this is because “social networks (there) are tight, allowing individuals to feel happy with their lot, regardless of financial success.”
This sounds more like the local situation. Even if you’re poor, if you’ve got 28 or so relatives sharing in your plight, it kind of lightens the load a bit. And let’s not forget that social (crazy) glue of Catholic faith and its bonding effect on people’s self-appraisal.
So why didn’t the Philippines rank higher in the happiness poll, like it always does? Who knows? And why does the US, which was still financially in the pink when the Gallup poll was taken, reveal such a disparity between financial comfort and self-fulfillment?
Perhaps, in the end, it shows us that the “pursuit of happiness” is a very different matter from happiness itself.