The World's Happiest Countries
by Sara Tucker
What's the happiest country in the world? That depends on your criteria. The Happy Planet Index gives top honors to a little-known island in the South Pacific; several other surveys finger a chilly country on the Baltic Sea. Australia ranks high by some standards, low by others. According to the World Values Survey, Nigeria rules.
There's "something dodgy about happy stats" that produce such a mishmash. What, exactly, are they measuring? It's often hard to know. Happiness isn't a scientific term, and researchers are free to use whatever criteria they want. The Happy Planet Index, for example, factors into its score a country's "ecological footprint," a washy concept that pulls the happiness rug out from under developed countries and is dismissed by some critics as irrelevant: "It is quite conceivable," says one blogger, "that people living in countries with a large ecological footprint could be happy even if it was the case that their lifestyles were unsustainable." Well, sure, but they wouldn't be happy for long.
Once you've sifted through the reams of scientific evidence, however, the advice we get from self-professed happy people is remarkably universal:
Spending time with family comes up a lot, along with being kind, generous, and community-minded. Share the wealth. Don't expect too much. There is even some rather curious evidence that our happiness hinges on a smaller ecological footprint:
It turns out that Denmark, that happiest of happy nations, is goofy about bicycles; one observer calls them "the best symbol of Danish happiness. Danes can all afford cars, but they choose bikes--simple, economical, nonpolluting machines that show no status and help keep people fit."
Further reading:
* Word of Mouth: Ole Bornedal's film Just Another Love Story takes viewers on a trip to Denmark
* A Bicycle Evangelist With the Wind Now at His Back (New York Times)
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