For the past nine years, a World Happiness Report has been published, with the report chronicling the progress made with the various things that make us happy, before then providing a ranking of the so-called happiest nations on earth.

For the past few years, the Nordics have dominated, with Finland coming top of the table in each of the last four years.  Of course, as explained in An Economist’s Lessons on Happiness, the very act of comparing ourselves with others may be making us less happy.

The book, by USC Dornsife’s Richard Easterlin, covers the 50 years or so of research into happiness conducted by the noted economist.  You’ve perhaps heard of Easterlin from his eponymous Easterlin Paradox, which states that if we look at any particular point in time, people are generally happier when they have more income.  This is generally contradicted however when you look over a period of time.

“It’s the time series relationship that’s relevant to questions like ‘would more money make me happy?’” Easterlin explains. “You’re thinking, ‘what’s going to happen over time as I get more money, will I become happier? And the answer to that is quite consistently ‘no.’”

Making comparisons

At the heart of this counterintuitive finding is that we tend to like comparing ourselves to others, whether in terms of our income, our health, our love life, and so on.  It’s this comparison that regulates our overall happiness.

“We make judgments about our own income based upon what others are getting, and if others are doing a lot better than us, we tend to be less happy,” Easterlin says. “It’s true that the increase in your own income by itself will make you happier. But what happens in practice is that, on average, as your income goes up, everybody else’s goes up, and the result is that nobody is happier.”

So it does beg the question as to whether the comparisons invoked by the league table produced by the World Happiness Report has itself an impact on our happiness.  Taking the optimistic view, however, and the report does provide some pointers as to the kind of things countries can do to help people be happier.

Making us happy

Easterlin argues that the Nordic countries are often the happiest in the world because they provide citizens with generous welfare states that focus specifically on the worries and concerns people have.  He highlights that this is often far more important than overall wealth, and cites the example of Costa Rica, who despite being poorer than many western countries is consistently rated as among the happiest in the world.

The Nordics do an excellent job of providing assurance of jobs and income security, while also guaranteeing healthcare and providing support for things such as families.

At an individual level, this is key, as Easterlin points out that our happiness is often determined by how much time we spend with our families and on our health rather than trying to earn as much money as we can.  And, of course, stop comparing ourselves to others.  That last pointer may be the hardest to achieve of all.