The following content is drawn directly from the WHR website. HumanistFreedoms.com makes no claim to copyright, authorship or accuracy of the mater. We recommend that you visit WHR to review and consider the World Happiness Report’s full 212-pages of observations and analysis.
In observance of the U.N. International Day of Happiness on March 20, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University (CSD), and partners of the World Happiness Report (WHR) hosted a launch of the 2021 World Happiness Report. As we are living through an exceptional time dealing with the widespread effects of the pandemic, this year’s World Happiness Report discussed world happiness during COVID-19. This is the ninth report from WHR.
This year’s report focuses on the effects of COVID-19 on happiness and how countries have differed in their success in reducing the deaths and maintaining connected and healthy societies. The effects of the pandemic on happiness, mental health, social connections, and the workplace are covered in Chapters 2, 5, 6, and 7 respectively. The choice of strategies for dealing with COVID-19 are covered in Chapters 2,3,4, and 8. The countries that performed best in minimising the direct death toll from COVID-19 were also able to do better on other fronts, including income, employment, and the mental and physical health of the rest of the population.
The rankings in Figure 2.1 of World Happiness Report 2021 use data that come from the Gallup World Poll surveys from 2018 to 2020. They are based on answers to the main life evaluation question asked in the poll. This is called the Cantril ladder: it asks respondents to think of a ladder, with the best possible life for them being a 10, and the worst possible life being a 0. They are then asked to rate their own current lives on that 0 to 10 scale. The rankings are from nationally representative samples, for the years 2018-2020. They are based entirely on the survey scores, using the Gallup weights to make the estimates representative. The sub-bars in Figure 2.1 show the estimated extent to which each of six factors – levels of GDP, life expectancy, generosity, social support, freedom, and corruption – are estimated to contribute to making life evaluations higher in each country than they are in Dystopia, a hypothetical country that has values equal to the world’s lowest national averages for each of the six factors (see FAQs: What is Dystopia?). The sub-bars have no impact on the total score reported for each country, but instead are just a way of explaining for each country the implications of the model estimated in Table 2.1. People often ask why some countries rank higher than others – the sub-bars (including the residuals, which show what is not explained) are an attempt to provide an answer to that question.
We use the most recent years in order to provide an up-to-date measure, and to measure changes over time. We combine data from the years 2018-2020 to make the sample size large enough to reduce the random sampling errors. (The horizontal lines at the right-hand end of each of the main bars show the 95% confidence interval for the estimate.) The typical annual sample for each country is 1,000 people. If a country had surveys in each year, then the sample size would be 3,000 people. However, there are many countries that have not had annual surveys, in which case the sample size is smaller than 3,000. Tables 1-3 of the online Statistical Appendix 1 show the sample size for each country in each year. Because of our interest in exploring how COVID-19 has influenced happiness for people in different countries and circumstances, we have done much of our analysis (as reported in Tables 2.2, 2.4, and 2.4).
WHR Figure 2.1 Part 3
At HumanistFreedoms.com we can’t help but wish for a comparative analysis of the WHR’s findings and the establishment of secular conditions around the globe.
Citations, References And Other Reading
- Featured Photo Courtesy of : https://worldhappiness.report/
- https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2016/05/29/religion-and-politics-the-limitations-of-secularism-and-liberal-discourse-in-the-non-west/
The views, opinions and analyses expressed in the articles on Humanist Freedoms are those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the publishers.
Humanist Heritage Canada 