Some of the poorer regions, perhaps, not surprisingly, rank much lower.
What do we learn when we study the differences
of happiness in this evaluation sense around the world?
We find out that income per person or GDP per capita matters,
but it doesn't matter all that much.
We have to keep focus that it's just one aspect of happiness.
A second major reason for happiness or unhappiness is
the quality of what we call social capital, social connections.
Do people have good networks of friends and colleagues?
Do they trust others in their community?
Do they trust their government to be honest or is their government corrupt?
That's a huge determinant of whether people report their lives to be of
high satisfaction or not.
Their own health, physical health and mental health,
of course plays a very important role.
And what I find absolutely fascinating and important,
a theme that I want us to reflect on as we think about sustainable
development is that an individual's values,
things that an individual holds to be important are shown to be
strongly related to whether that individual is happy or not.
Interestingly, the people who report a very strong fixation on getting rich and
very materialistic values, turn out to be a bit more frustrated.
They don't report as much satisfaction in life.
People who report that generosity is very important to them, volunteering, giving,
a sense of altruism, contributing to the community, are also values that are shown
repeatedly in many studies to be related to a higher level of life satisfaction.
This is quite important for us as we think about sustainable development.
If we simply pursue income per capita just raise that gross domestic
product per capita no matter what, we're going to lose it on many counts.
Societies will become highly unequal.
The physical environment will come under great threat.
But also people will not necessarily achieve the kind of happiness and
life satisfaction that they want.
If we take a more balanced and
holistic approach as sustainable development bids us to do.
Paying attention to higher income per person.
But also focusing on healthy societies, social inclusion,
honest government, networks of social support.