Venezuelans are happier than Brits, apparently…

This blog post is apt for two reasons; firstly, I said I would write it in my January blog post as the other side of the story, if you don’t know what I am referring to go back and read it! Secondly, I’m sure you’ve all seen the #100happydays posts on various channels of social media (Sarah Feldman’s is a personal favourite), and I think it’s great that for once people are thinking about what’s good in the world.  And there is so much of it in so many forms we often overlook it entirely. I’m going to make a sweeping generalisation that if you’re reading this, your life is probably pretty good, or at least has the potential to be (based on the assumption that internet accessibility suggests relatively good socio-economic conditions and a high degree of autonomy). This isn’t disregarding the fact that bad things happen, because they do. But I like to think of the glass as half full. This begs the question, what makes us happy? Money? People? Personally, I love a pun…

I think I found this a little bit funnier than the average person, but then again I literally cry at Dinner for One, which says enough about my sense of humour…

So excusing my digression, there is a growing amount of academic attention being paid to studying happiness, but it seems to me that it’s pretty hard to measure something so intangible and subjective, especially as I’ve always thought of happiness as a temporal state rather than a base condition. But nevertheless, the general practice is to use happiness studies, which essentially are surveys asking people to reflect on their satisfaction with life, and then as with any survey a small sample becomes representative for the whole population. An example of this is the World Values Survey. All the ‘facts’ – which I use carefully as I am actually sceptical about the reliability of such surveys (just think that there are governments commissioning these surveys who can’t even offer their citizens clean water) – that I am going to refer to next come from the World Happiness Report 2013, so they are pretty much as up to date as they can be given the scope of the project. It’s an interesting report, definitely worth a read if you have time and are really nerdy, which a lot of my friends are (and I’m assuming you guys read my blog at least due to the sense of obligation, but hopefully due to an actual interest). And as an aside – I love nerdy people, that wasn’t a put down.

Whenever I have a conversation with my mum she raves about how awesome Denmark is and how she wants to move there EVEN MORE THAN IRELAND (anyone who knows her will currently be like dhihrsighizdrhf). And apparently she is well informed as people in Denmark are in fact on average the happiest in the whole world, closely followed by those in Norway. Scandinavian countries are firmly up there in the top ten countries with the happiest citizens, which, being firmly left-wing, I like to think has something to do with the relatively low levels of inequality (relatively being the operative word). Sadly for people in Togo they are on average the least happy. Excluding the obvious, I don’t know why that might be having only just googled where Togo actually is (though it did not surprise me that it was an African country that came in last on the happiness scale), shame on the geographer I know. Just out interest for you the UK comes in as the 22^nd happiest nation, and Germany the 26^th. Go figure. Venezuela is in fact generally happier than the UK coming in as the 20^th happiest nation. Now I’m no expert on Venezuela but find it interesting that a country with a dubious political atmosphere ranks in higher than the UK, though again inequality is lower, which I still maintain plays a big role in happiness. I also figure that this survey was done before Chavez died, so it would be interesting to see how Venezuelans would rank their happiness now.

This brings me to the central question here, what actually makes us happy? Considering that Denmark is ranked the happiest country on average, it’s probably a safe bet that money plays a role in determining happiness. And this is true; money facilitates access to basic goods like food, water and housing, which are all vital to health and personal safety, and thus staying alive. But studies have shown that beyond this material goods become less valued, and the value of every pound – in terms of its impact on happiness – decreases the richer you are. To put this into context, a pound means more to a farmer from Togo than an IT consultant in Denmark. And I hit the nail on the head with the link between equality and happiness as studies note that people’s happiness is partly driven by their relative income. If you can see that your life is comparably as good as those around you you’re likely to feel pretty good, hence why Venezuelans are likely to be happier than Brits. There is a YouTube video showing an experiment with monkeys; when a monkey does what the researcher wants he gets a bit of cucumber. His neighbour does the same, and gets cucumber too. They seem quite happy with this arrangement. It’s like being paid for going to work. But then the researchers start rewarding the neighbour with grapes and the first monkey gets angry as he is getting a worse deal that the other (assuming that monkeys feel grapes are better than cucumber). Evolution hasn’t overcome this trait as of yet, no one wants to feel like they are poorer than those around them.

But if money only makes us happy to a certain extent, what else is doing it for us? Well, there are a number of things that are likely to make us happier relative to people who do not have them, namely being married, religious, physically healthy, more educated, employed and having friends. Denmark’s happiness, according to the happiness report, is explained more by social support than GDP, which seems totally reasonable. It’s all about the people.

Right now I’m feeling pretty satisfied with my lot, only missing out on being married (which might happen) and being religious (which is a personal choice). What I think makes me happy too is autonomy and my ability to choose where my life is going. Yes there are constraints to this, but generally I can do what I want. And generally so can you (based again on the assumptions of your ability to be reading this). So for us, life is pretty sweet. Just take a minute to think about that. Maybe start your own #100happy days if you feel like you need to share what makes your life incredible. I’m going to share a bit of my happiness with you in my usual fashion with a link to a YouTube video suitable for a hungover Sunday afternoon, happy days:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13EifDb4GYs

Not only does Moby make good music, but he’s ethical too. He did the soundtrack for Earthlings, a film about meat production in America. Not recommended if you are squeamish.