Jeffrey Sachs, director of
the Earth Institute at Columbia
University
“It is not just wealth that
makes people happy: Political freedom, strong social networks and an absence of
corruption all play a part,” according to Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth
Institute at Columbia
University.
Other factors found to be
important to happiness include personal health, job security and stable family
life, the report said.
Earth Institute names Taiwan 3rd happiest nation in Asia
Publication Date：04/05/2012
Source： Taiwan
Today
By Kwangyin Liu
Taiwan has been ranked the third happiest nation in Asia in the first World Happiness Report, which measures
people’s self-reported satisfaction with their lives.
The report, unveiled at the
U.N. Conference on Happiness in New York April
2, pegged Taiwan
46th among 156 countries surveyed. Singapore
and Japan
were ranked 33rd and 44th, respectively.
“It is not just wealth that
makes people happy: Political freedom, strong social networks and an absence of
corruption all play a part,” according to Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth
Institute at Columbia
University.
Other factors found to be
important to happiness include personal health, job security and stable family
life, the report said.
Northern European countries,
including Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands
and Norway, rank among the
happiest and most satisfied nations, while countries at the bottom of the list
lie mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, such as Benin,
Burundi, the Central African Republic and Togo.
Using data collected by
Gallup World Poll over the past seven years, the study showed that while people
in countries with a higher gross domestic product tend to report greater
happiness levels, higher average incomes are not always followed by gains in
happiness, according to Sachs.
“The recent focus on
perceived happiness reflects a new worldwide demand for more attention to
happiness and absence of misery as criteria for government policy,” he said.
(THN)
Write to Kwangyin Liu at kwangyin.liu@mail.gio.gov.tw
World Happiness Report:
Smiling faces say it all
Dhanusha Gokulan
5 April 2012
DUBAI - For some, it’s being with family, for a few others
its material wealth, some give credit to love and for many it’s just a state of
mind. So what is it that keeps a smile on people’s faces?
The World Happiness Report
was released at a United Nations conference recently and it places the UAE in
the 17th position. Denmark
topped the list, closely followed by Finland,
Norway, The Netherlands, Canada, Switzerland,
Sweden, New Zealand, Australia
and Ireland.
The UN conference titled “Happiness and Well-being: Defining a New Economic
Paradigm” brought together hundreds of representatives of governments,
academics and other civic leaders to discuss the issue, according to an AP
report.
The report was released by
Jeffrey Sachs, the Director of The Earth Institute, a think tank from Columbia
Institute.
The report noted that social
factors such as the strength of social support, the absence of corruption and
the degree of personal freedom were more important than wealth. Sachs, a prominent development economist at Columbia University
in New York
who edited the World Happiness Report along with John Helliwell and Richard
Layard, said happiness could be achieved independent of economic well-being as
measured by a country’s gross national product.
Khaleej Times asked a few
residents of the UAE, if they were happy taking into account the details of the
report.
Nineteen-year-old Massef
Sharafudheen, a student at the American
University of Dubai, is a happy, lively person according to
his friends.
“I have been living here for
12 years and it’s been very comfortable for me. I do not have a lot of
responsibilities, and I prefer living in the UAE than any other place in the
world,” said Sharafudheen. “From what I see, the younger generation here in the
UAE is a happy lot. We have very little responsibility and unlike our
counterparts elsewhere in the world, we have very little financial or family
issues. There is no bullying or racism in schools and I have a very good life.
UAE can accommodate people from any place in the world, which makes it a very
desirable place to live in,” he added.
Fifteen-year-old Pakistani
national Maha Waseem said: “I grew up here in the UAE and yes, I am a happy
person. I have a nice life and personally I think the government here takes
good care of the people, which automatically makes people living in a country
happy”.
Markus N, a Swiss national,
has been living in the UAE for the last two months.
He said: “I am a happy joyful
person because God made me so.” Markus stressed that even though he read about
issues elsewhere around the world, it did not affect him much.
“I am aware of issues
happening around the world and so are most of the people I work with over here.
The cliché is that if we work hard, we can earn more and have money to buy
things that keep us happy. But it doesn’t necessarily work that way. We are
created happy and joyful. I am happy because I pray to God everyday.”
Phillip Batistis, a Filipino
nurse, said: “Yes, I am happy. Even though I stay away from my family, I am
happy. I meet people from all over the world, and it helps me learn a lot about
other cultures.”
British national Stephen
Short said that the reason he is so happy is because his family is happy. “I
shifted to the UAE from the UK
because I was offered a better pay package, and apart from the paperwork and
formalities that need to be completed here, living in the UAE is quiet
comfortable. So, yes I am happy.” The
report also stated that in most advanced nations, women report higher
satisfaction than men.
The report also listed a
number of practical suggestions for governments to promote happiness among
their citizens, including helping people meet their basic needs, reinforcing
social systems, implementing active labour policies, improving mental health
services, promoting compassion, altruism and honesty, and helping the public
resist hyper-commercialism.
dhanusha@khaleejtimes.com
Are we having fun yet? Brits
come 18th in UN's first World Happiness rankings... behind Costa Rica, Israel and UAE
By Mario Ledwith
PUBLISHED: 15:08 GMT, 3 April
2012 | UPDATED: 22:49 GMT, 3 April 2012
Comments (92)
Share
The UK has been placed behind the likes of Costa Rica, Israel
and the United Arab Emirates
in a global league table of happiness.
Despite being one of the
richest nations in the world, the UK has been ranked as only the 18th
happiest in an authoritative United Nations report, behind much poorer
countries.
Britain was placed six places behind Costa Rica – a country where average income
levels are less than one quarter of those in the UK.
Nobody happier: Nyhavn in Copenhagen, Denmark,
where citizens are the happiest in the world, the report found
The relatively high level of
family breakdown in the UK
is one reason why we may have been pushed
down the list.
The table was topped by
wealthy Scandinavian nations – with Denmark,
Finland and Norway ranked
as the three happiest respectively.
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after ten years
Un-happiness index: Official
measure of wellbeing shows half of us are miserable over our work/life balance
Impoverished and war-ravaged
nations in Africa, including Sierra Leone
and Togo,
came at the bottom of the table.
But despite a general link
between a country’s wealth and its mood, the author of the World Happiness
Report said the two factors were not inherently linked.
Not happy: Women shop at a
market in Tsevie, Togo,
Africa. Togo
is the least happy nation in the world, behind a long list of other countries
in sub-Saharan Africa
Jeffrey Sachs, a development
economist from New York’s Columbia University, said happiness could be achieved
independently of a country’s economic performance, arguing: ‘The U.S. has had a
three-time increase of gross national product per capita since 1960, but the
happiness needle hasn’t budged.’
WHO ARE THE WORLD'S HAPPIEST?
1. Denmark
2. Finland
3. Norway
4. Netherlands
5. Canada
6. Switzerland
7. Sweden
8. New Zealand
9. Australia
10. Ireland
11. USA
12. Costa Rica
13. Austria
14. Israel
15. Belgium
16. Luxembourg
17. United Arab Emirates
18. United Kingdom
19. Venezuela
20. Iceland
Other factors such as social
relations and general health were deemed more important.
The report incorporated
several British studies which had found that marriage and self-employment were
key factors leading to an increase in levels of happiness in the UK.
Mr Sachs said ‘affluence has
created its own set of afflictions’.
He added that economic
development led to problems such as eating disorders, obesity, diabetes and
tobacco-related illnesses. The academic also said economic development led to
addiction to shopping, television and gambling.
He warned that there were
wider social issues associated with economic growth, including ‘the loss of
community, the decline of social trust, and the rising anxiety levels
associated with the vagaries of the modern globalised economy’.
The table was created by the
UN, which compiled worldwide survey responses from 2005 until mid-2011 to
determine the happiness level of 156 different countries.
The idea of a national
happiness score in order to determine policy has been used in Britain.
Last year a controversial
£2million survey ordered by David Cameron concluded that three quarters of the
population rated themselves as ‘seven out of ten’ on a wellbeing scale.
Critics of the survey argued that it was costly and unnecessary.
But the Office for National
Statistics, which carried out the research, said the study was just the first
step towards measuring national wellbeing and helping future governments base
their policies on what makes voters happy.
Jesse Kline:
If the government wants to
make me happy, it should leave me alone
Can the government make you
happier? Tonight, many of us will get off from a hard day’s work, fill our cars
with gas that is fast approaching $1.50 per litre, start worrying about the
looming tax deadline and — should we choose to take the edge off by consuming
something like marijuana — risk harsh mandatory minimum sentences. The
government might not make us happy, but it sure can make us sad.
Like many aspects of
economics, things tend to work better when we don’t have central planners
conducting social and economic experiments on us, for the simple reason that
they do not have enough information to make decisions for ourselves and our
families better than we can. But this fact always seems to escape those who
would like to remake the world according to some unattainable ideal. Take, for
example, the bureaucrats over at the United Nations. This week, the UN released
it World Happiness Report, a 158-page document that should come with a caveat
stating that the report itself is not actually intended to make you happier —
but has been known to cure insomnia.
My colleague Terrence
Corcoran effectively argued on the front page of Tuesday’s National Post that,
similar to global warming alarmists, the campaign to use happiness as a means
of measuring national economies has largely been championed by socialists,
whose goal is to increase government intervention in our lives. And, as Mr.
Corcoran reminds us, “no economist ever claimed GDP was a measure of
happiness.” But perhaps we should not be so quick to dismiss happiness as a
useful measure of a free and prosperous society.
Much of the findings in the
World Happiness Report are fairly intuitive: Wealthier countries tend to be
happier, while unemployment makes people unhappy. But the big question is what
the authors think policy makers should take away from their findings, and on
this point they are fairly vague. For example, the report recommends that
governments should not pursue GDP growth to the point where “economic stability
is imperilled” or “community cohesion is destroyed.” No kidding.
Governments certainly can
have pro-growth policies that lead to economic bubbles. They can also pursue
anti-growth strategies that lead to a decline in the standard of living — which
isn’t good for anyone. The best government can do is stay out of the way, so
the economy can find a happy equilibrium. They should not, however, do things
like create “public employment” as a means of reducing unemployment, like the
report suggests. Digging holes and filling them back up may make a few people
happier, but it makes us all worse off. It is often said that money cannot buy
happiness and, for the most part, this is completely true. But while wealth
itself is not a means to achieving a happy life, it certainly allows people to
overcome economic barriers that could be standing in the way of exploring the
many great possibilities life has to offer. And yet, there is a growing body of
evidence that suggests it is the freedom to pursue ones passions that makes
people happy — not their relative success.
A 2006 study published in the
Journal of Socio-Economics and authored by the University
of Regina’s Tomi Ovaska and Ryo Takashima
of the University
of West Virginia, found
the two factors that made the biggest difference in terms of happiness and life
satisfaction are economic freedom and health. The report concludes that even
though GDP is a fairly good indicator of standard of living, the data suggests
that “alternative economic variables, notably economic freedom, are more
effective in raising the average well-being of populations.” Even the authors
of the UN report acknowledge that, “In a happy society, individuals feel they are
charting their own courses through life, without excessive constraints. That is
why there was such unhappiness in the countries of the Soviet bloc before their
transition to functioning and stable open societies, and why the happiest
countries all have very high shares of their populations who feel free.” So
perhaps the take-away from this report should be that happy people are free
people — and freedom is achieved in the absence of government control.
National Post
jkline@nationalpost.com