Analytics, Baltic, EU – Baltic States, Modern EU, Society

The World Happiness Report WHR is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness. The WHR- 2017, which ranks 155 countries by their happiness levels, is released at the end of March 2017 by the UN at an event celebrating International Day of Happiness. The report, the fifth since 2012, continues to gain global recognition as governments, organizations and civil society increasingly use happiness indicators to inform their policy-making decisions.

The report tries to answer one vital question: how does variation in happiness’ factors, in particularly, income inequality, explain the overall variation of happiness? In this regard, the “life satisfaction” factor is mainly analysed together with impacts of income, employment, partnership (married or single life), physical and mental health… 

Thomas Jefferson, already in 1809 underlined that “the care of human life and happiness … is the only legitimate object of a good government”. 

Short history

The first happiness report was published in April, 2012, in support of the UN High Level Meeting on happiness and well-being. Since then the world has come a long way. Increasing­ly, happiness is considered to be the proper measure of social progress and the goal of public policy. In June 2016 the OECD committed itself “to redefine the growth narrative to put people’s well-being at the center of governments’ efforts”.

In February 2017, the United Arab Emirates held a full-day World Happiness meeting, as part of the World Government Summit. On the World Happiness Day (March 20^th ) the World Happiness Report 2017 was launched; it was published by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network now supported by a generous three-year grant from the Ernesto Illy Foundation. 

Leaders in happiness: Baltic States have an example

 Norway moves to the top of the ranking despite weaker oil prices. The Report argues that sometimes Norway achieves and maintains its high happiness not because of its oil wealth, but in spite of it. By choosing to produce its oil slowly, and investing the proceeds for the future rather than spending them in the present, Norway has insulated itself from the boom and bust cycle of many other resource-rich economies.

The Report’s outcome is vital: to reach high rank in happiness, a country “requires high levels of mutual trust, shared purpose, generosi­ty and good governance”. These factors helped Norway and other “top states” at the high level in happiness rankings.

All other countries in the top ten also have high values in all six of the key variables used to explain happiness differences among countries and through time: income, healthy life expec­tancy, having someone to count on in times of trouble, generosity, freedom and trust, with the latter measured by the absence of corruption in business and government.

There has been some shuffling of ranks among closely grouped countries, with this year’s rankings placing Finland in 5^th place, followed by the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Austra­lia and Sweden tied for the 9^th position. These countries were having almost the same positions during 2014-2016.  

Thus, three Nordic states – Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden are among the 10 best in the world: good example in governance to emulate for the Baltic States!

Social & personal aspects

The 2017 report emphasizes the importance of the social foundations of happiness (Chapter 2). This can be seen by comparing the life experiences between the top and bottom ten countries in this year’s happiness rankings. There is a four-point happiness gap between the two groups of countries, of which three-quarters is explained by the six variables, half due to differences in having someone to count on, generosity, a sense of freedom, and freedom from corruption. The other half of the explained difference is attributed to GDP per capita and healthy life expectancy, both of which, as the report explains, also depend importantly on the social context.

However 80% of the variance of happiness across the world occurs within countries. In richer countries the within-country differences are not mainly explained by income inequality, but by differences in mental health, physical health and personal relationships: the biggest single source of misery is mental illness (chapter 5). Income differences matter more in poorer countries, but even there mental illness is a major source of misery.

Work is also a major factor affecting happiness (chapter 6). Unemployment causes a major fall in happiness, and even for those in work the quality of work can cause major variations in happiness.

The USA is a story of reduced happiness: in 2007 the USA ranked 3^rd among the OECD countries; in 2016 it came 19^th . The reasons are declining social support and increased corruption (chapter 7) and it is these same factors that explain why the Nordic countries do so much better.

See: Executive summary at: 

Main reference: the whole report at: