A report published on the International Day of Happiness (March 20), can go a long way in helping people make good decisions to improve their lives, says Simon Fraser University professor Lara Aknin.
“It’s great that we can measure people’s mental health and well-being,» said Aknin, one of the six editors of the 2023 World Happiness Report. «People can have positive feelings that extend beyond neutral.… They can be very happy with their lives; they can feel meaningful, thriving and connected and all these wonderful things…. So the fact that we can measure it allows us to think about what it is we can do.”
The report, published by Sustainable Development Solutions Network and based on Gallup World Poll data, ranked Canada as the 13th happiest country in the world among the 137 countries included in the report. It based the results on six key factors related to happiness: social support, income, health, freedom, generosity and absence of corruption.
Finland emerged as the world’s happiest country for the sixth consecutive year, while the U.S. ranked two places below Canada at 15th.
What makes a country happy?
Although Aknin can’t pinpoint to the exact reason what makes Nordic countries stand out for being the happiest, she says she thinks a part of it has to do with wealth. Many of the countries that emerge on the top are relatively wealthy, she noted. Most people in the happiest countries earn at least a living wage and have a relatively comfortable lifestyle, while people on the poorer economic spectrum in those countries have structural support in place.
Canada’s rankings are not the highest, she noted. However, they are also not the lowest. Many factors, including several overlapping crises (COVID-19 and the Ukraine-Russia war among them) play a role. Despite the crises, the report noted that most populations, not just in Canada but around the world, continued to be resilient.
“I also think Canada has relatively high levels of trust and low levels of corruption,” Aknin said. “In general, people tend to be relatively autonomous. They feel like they have the freedom to make their choices. But there are also relatively high levels of social support and generosity.”
The report takes a closer look at the trends of how happiness is distributed, and Canada places relatively highly in GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, absence of corruption, freedom to make life choices and generosity.
“The finding that I think is really meaningful and worth spotlighting is … generosity or levels of benevolence, and various forms of pro-social behaviour,” added Aknin. “There are three main forms that are assessed: donating money to charity, volunteering for a charitable organization and helping a neighbour. All of those are significantly up in, I think, in every region of the world, compared to pre-COVID years.”
“So I think a lot of people assumed that COVID was terrible for group dynamics — that there’d be fights and brawls for limited resources — but on the contrary, we see that benevolence levels were up and remained up last year, so I think that’s really interesting.”