The World Happiness Report and the science of personal happiness

Tuesday, 13 August 2019

We're one of the 10 happiest countries on Earth, so what makes us a smile?

There's no hard and fast set of rules on how to be happy.

But if there were, a good one to include would be to live in New Zealand.

We are in the World top 10 of happiest countries, according to the United Nations, beaten only by the Scandinavian five (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland), Canada, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

The World Happiness Report provides an insight into the science of what makes people happy.

The UN-endorsed World Happiness Report ranks countries based on six criteria: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceptions (not reality) of corruption.

* ANZ report shows simple steps to increase Kiwis' 'financial wellbeing

* She who holds the purse-strings, worries more**

There's a growing body of research on happiness clearly shows there are things that make us happier, and things that detract from our happiness.

And the UN's criteria (which can be translated into money, support in times of trouble, health, freedom, generosity, fairness and safety) are a pretty good nation-level take on the findings of happiness science.

In science, today's conclusions are often tomorrow's debunked myths, so caution has to be taken over every claim made, especially when it comes to drawing a link between two variables — for example: people who exercise are happier, therefore exercise makes you happy.

But there are some things that the last 30 years of happiness research appear to show are demonstrably true.

MONEY

Having money is good for happiness.

Having money reduces stress levels. When you don't have to worry about the power bill, there's less to stress about, or at best, there's one fewer source of worry and unhappiness in your life.

Poorer people in New Zealand report lower levels of life satisfaction, and feel less safe, Stats NZ data shows.

A lack of money limits choice, and increases the number of stressors in a person's life.

Money brings choices, and best of all it allows people to buy time, for example, by paying a cleaner so you have time to read a book, and to buy experiences, which are better than things. Money isn't only of value for itself.

For New Zealanders, a sense of wellbeing comes from having a fair share of it. People in areas of high income equality, are happier.

This relativity on wealth and income shows its head in another, less flattering way.

A pay rise may give you a happiness boost, but the boost is less, if all your colleagues got a pay rise too.

Having money may well reduce something that's definitely toxic to long-term contentment, which is envy.

Envy may have been lauded at times as a force for economic good, driving individuals to work harder, smarter and longer, but it can have a toxic impact on a person's life.

Happiness researcher Andrew Oswald from the UK found the intensity of a person's envy is associated with a slower growth of psychological wellbeing as their life goes on.

Everyone, old and young, needs to have someone to rely on in times of trouble.

Cutting envy may mean toning down your social media use, and exposure to advertising.

Adverts tend to show happy people, with their happiness linked to the consumption of products or services, or the ownership of an item like a car, or new clothes. Oswald, in a joint project with other researchers, found increases in advertising spending within a country led to declines in life satisfaction.

SOCIAL SUPPORT

International research has established the depth of a person's social connections, and whether they have people to call on in times of trouble, is important for happiness.

Marriage, and stable, long-term relationships, are predictors of happiness.

Harvard University has run one of the longest ever studies on a group of people. Starting in 1938 Harvard's Dr Arlie Bock studied a cohort of 268 Harvard graduates, and 456 men who grew up in inner-city Boston.

Being healthy and active is a predictor of happiness.

He found health and education were very important, but concluded: 'Warm, intimate relationships are the most important prologue to a good life.'

Social support also comes from outside of the home.

So, as recent research from the Pew Foundation in the US found, is being active in religion.

This was an effect that was also measurable in New Zealand. Simply being religious did not seem to be associated with higher personal happiness. It was being 'active in a congregation' that was linked to greater personal happiness.

The Pew Institute stressed this finding could be interpreted in different ways. People who were active and healthy might be more able and inclined to participate in religious congregations, for example, than people who were unhealthy and disengaged with their local communities.

HEALTH

Health is one of the most influential predictor of happiness, research shows, and while New Zealand may score highly for obesity, we do have long health expectancies compared to many other countries.

Exercise is important, but being super fit is not.

The Declaration of Independence said every person was entitled to pursue happiness.

The available evidence supports the idea that people who are active and physically fit are at a lower risk of developing depression.

In April the Journal of Happiness Studies did a huge literature study of research into the link between exercise and happiness.

It concluded: 'All the observational studies reported positive associations between physical activity and happiness. As little as 10-min physical activity per week or 1 day of doing exercise per week might result in increased levels of happiness.'

'However, due to the limited number of randomized controlled trials, we cannot draw firm conclusions regarding the causal relationship between physical activity and happiness.'

Does exercise make people happier, or do happy people exercise more? The question, it appears, begs for more study.

FREEDOM

People walk past a construction billboard with personal messages written on for the Christchurch community from Aucklanders near the downtown Ferry Terminal, Auckland in relation to the deadly mosque shootings in Christchurch.

The US Declaration of Independence recognised the importance of happiness, linking it with freedom from British oppression.

Giving is an expression of support. It is 'prosocial' and induces a sense of happiness and inclusion.

'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,' it said.

But is the freedom to be master, or mistress of your own destiny happiness-inducing?

The Applied Research into Quality of Life journal agrees with both the World Happiness Report (which ranks wealthier countries- New Zealand included- as the happiest) and the US founding fathers that it is.

The current state of play appears to be that if you are poor, an improvement in your 'economic freedom' (that is the ability to make economic choices) has a large impact on your happiness.

Once you have enough money to make basic choices, political freedom become important to happiness.

GENEROSITY

Giving makes people happy, or as the authors of the World Happiness Report put it: 'It [generosity] is clearly a marker for a sense of positive community engagement, and a central way that humans connect with each other.'

'Some studies have found that people are happier when spending money on others than on themselves, and this happiness motivates them to be generous in the future. And even small acts of kindness, like picking up something someone else has dropped, make people feel happy,' Summer Allen from the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, said.

'Generosity is also associated with benefits in the workplace, such as reducing the likelihood of job burnout, and in relationships, where it is associated with more contentment and longer-lasting romantic relationships.'

It also appears to be an act that validates our sense of who we are.

CORRUPTION AND FAIRNESS

New Zealand has finally pulled its head out of the sand in tackling corruption head on, but for years we pretended there was no corruption in New Zealand.

Recent years has seen exposure and higher-profile investigations of corrupt employees, corrupt civil servants, corrupt WOF inspectors and corrupt use of companies and trusts.

The research appears to show that perceptions of rising corruption hurt happiness most in developed countries where people expect corruption not to happen.

AND THE REST…

World Happiness Report authors had to construct their rankings from easily-available data, and they admit some of their six happiness factors may, in fact, be taking credit for something else.

High GDP may, for example, indicate a country with an economy in which there are more opportunities for people to use their potential, and achieve a sense of purpose in their lives.

And there may be some things that are big influencers of happiness that are not being caught at all.

An absence of violence, no restrictions on the ability to live your culture or sexuality, access to nature and reasonable commutes are all predictors of happiness in humans.

* This article is part of the Good Life Guide, an editorial project sponsored by Skoda. We have produced it independently, to the same standards applied to the rest of our journalism. Read more about our partnership content here