Every so often, Gallup and other polling companies go around the world asking the citizens of different lands how happy they are. Forbes’ website today published the most recent iteration of the “happiness” poll, in which the Scandinavians, as usual, came out on top. Also among the top eight were Australia, a country so rich that daily labor is considered a minor interruption of the primary occupation of hauling a barbecue and cooler to the beach, and Israel. The Aussies and Israelis are tied for number 8.
Of course, just what might constitute happiness can be culture-specific. Putting the Scandinavians (as well as the Dutch) at the top of the poll is somewhat counter-intuitive, for these are peoples who generally do not seem particularly cheerful.
Finland ranks second in happiness on the Gallup survey, although it has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, at 29 per 100,000 of population, putting it in fourteenth place. Denmark’s alcohol consumption puts in the top 10 at 11.7 liters of pure alcohol equivalent per capital per year; perhaps what makes Danes happy is that they like to drink and, given the country’s generous welfare state, have ample leisure to do so. Finns may feel happy because if things don’t work out they have the option of suicide.
Some years ago I constructed an alternative measure, based on objective variables rather than subject responses to pollsters. I plotted the fertility rate vs. the suicide rate, surmising that people who like having children and don’t like killing themselves must be happy.
The result was striking:
Among the industrial nations, Israel had the highest fertility by far, and the second-lowest suicide rate. (Israelis are not big drinkers, either, consuming only 2.5 liters of alcohol equivalent per capita per year). Of course, Israelis complain incessantly and bicker about everything. Even so, the fact that Israel was tied with happy-go-lucky Australia in the Gallup pool seems remarkable. By objective measures, they are, well, a people apart, as Balaam said.
July 26th, 2010 | 4:30 pm
If you enjoy complaining and arguing, then being among millions of other people who also enjoy these things will make you happy. We can relate this to Robert Putnam’s finding, reported by John Leo in 2007, here:
http://www.johnleo.com/2007/06/26/bowling-with-our-own/
“Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, is very nervous about releasing his new research, and understandably so. His five-year study shows that immigration and ethnic diversity have a devastating short- and medium-term influence on the social capital, fabric of associations, trust, and neighborliness that create and sustain communities. He fears that his work on the surprisingly negative effects of diversity will become part of the immigration debate, even though he finds that in the long run, people do forge new communities and new ties.
Putnam’s study reveals that immigration and diversity not only reduce social capital between ethnic groups, but also within the groups themselves. Trust, even for members of one’s own race, is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friendships fewer. The problem isn’t ethnic conflict or troubled racial relations, but withdrawal and isolation. Putnam writes: “In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down’—that is, to pull in like a turtle.”
In the 41 sites Putnam studied in the U.S., he found that the more diverse the neighborhood, the less residents trust neighbors.”[end excerpt]
It would be interesting to see the correlations between diversity and happiness using both measures of happiness. Now, Israel seems a special case. They have the highest level of immigration of any industrialized country, by far. And the population is diverse insofar as the immigrants are from various places, and within the native-born there are different groups of Jews — western secular, western religious of various stripes, Sephardic eastern from different countries and different races, and so on. But (leaving aside the 20-25% Muslim population) all these people see their Jewishness as their primary identity, even while they also retain loyalty to their subgroups, and even while they revile other kinds of Jews. It’s probably been studied, because Israelis study everything, but I’d be interested to know what part this Jewish identity and being surrounded by other Jews plays in their happiness.
July 26th, 2010 | 4:40 pm
Hmmmm. Don’t Scandinavian countries have very high suicide rates?
July 26th, 2010 | 5:07 pm
As to the graph. The points seem to all over the place, rather than showing any pattern, let alone lying on some simple curve. It reminds me of what a famous physicist joked when shown a similar plot: “Well, at least they lie in a plane!”
July 26th, 2010 | 7:27 pm
What I want to know is what miserable and unfortunate country is at 40 suicides per 100,000 and a 1.29 fertility rate?
July 26th, 2010 | 9:28 pm
Steve Barr,
Although the r-squared of fertility on suicide rates in the 35-country sample is low (at .09), the t-statistic is -2.11, that is, significant at the 96% confidence level. In this sort of cross-sectional analysis signficance often tells us more than regression fit. I didn’t publish this result because the two variables do not need to be related in order to be relevant (fertility and propensity for suicide may have independent cultural determinants but both bear on love of life).
Gregg, the unfortunate country in question is Ukraine.
Wesley, Scandinavian countries have a fairly high suicide rate but the former Soviet Union is more than double theirs.
July 27th, 2010 | 12:53 am
Wonderful post.
July 27th, 2010 | 8:48 am
Does suicide rate correlate with latitude? I wouldn’t be surprised if the relatively high suicide rate in Scandinavia is related, at least in part, to the fact that they’re playing footsie with the arctic circle. I lived in Norway for several years and although I usually don’t have even a trace of seasonal affective disorder, the winters there were a downer. For people predisposed to depression, they must be devastating.
Like Israel, Finland is a nation apart, ethnically. There might be some genetic predisposition there.
July 27th, 2010 | 9:04 am
not that it’s of much significance, but i’ve a graduate degree in stats and i think you’re reading too much into the graph as well, especially if you’re suggesting any sort of causality between the two variables. studies of happiness and kids are controversial of course, but generally not in favour of the argument you’re trying to make. perhaps people with kids want to kill themselves, but feel like they shouldn’t? perhaps there are reasons other than happiness that oblige israelis to not kill themselves?
July 27th, 2010 | 10:50 am
I don’t read any causal relationship between the variables; this is not a causal model but a simple index, as I said above (although the t-stat suggest there is some causal link). People who like living are more likely to have babies and less likely to kill themselves, although these matters may be culturally determined independently. For what it’s worth, I spent fifteen years on Wall Street building econometric as well as valuation models, and programmed mainframe TSP a decade before the PC canned packages became available.
I have done some work on the determinants of fertility, though, here:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GH02Aa01.html
July 27th, 2010 | 12:42 pm
Happiness surveys should always be suspect. It’s hard for me to imagine describe Finland as a happy country given its drinking problems and lack of sunlight much of the year. People will often tell a pollster they are happy because that’s what they think they should say, rather than anything more profound than that. You don’t want to alarm the pollster by saying how miserable you are, and force them to alert the suicide hotline.
Happiness is best determined, from my personal experience, not from data analysis (although I do that too) but as a little old human being who has lived enough decades to draw conclusions. Go and talk in a casual or personal way with people who live in various countries, or from various strata of a society, and you can judge from the vibes you get from them whether they are happy or not with their lives, generally. If your anecdotal sample is large and varied enough (say, 50 people from any country or stratum) you can begin to draw conclusions without statistical analysis. I have always thought that Israel was a happier society than most Western societies, even more so in its pioneering days than today, without looking at any statistics. You can feel it from the way people talk and live their lives. This includes having children and family life, as well as involvement in political life. That’s proof enough for me.
July 27th, 2010 | 5:44 pm
Not trying to be glib here, but perhaps one reason Israelis don’t want to kill themselves is because there are so many national neighbors willing to do that for them.
August 3rd, 2010 | 11:25 am
[...] most intriguing commentary I’ve seen on the numbers comes from David P. Goldman over at First Things, who points out some of the more curious [...]
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