A Plateau of Happiness
Courtesy of New York Times:
A country’s wealth may not always dictate the happiness of the people.
Many countries, particularly those marked in Latin America, had higher marks for happiness than their economic situation would predict.
While the median incomein the US is higher than it was 30 years ago, people are not reporting increased happiness, polls show.
Related article.
October 04 2005 02:48 pm | Uncategorized
October 4th, 2005 at 9:31 pm
For a second I thought that maybe this also had to do with alcohol consumption, but I’d put money on the fact that this probably has to do with the consumption of heavier drugs such as heroin and cocaine.
See Brazil, Columbia, Bolivia as an example of this…all Latin American countries. Very happy and festive. Carnival!
Alcohol probably brings down the happiness level…see Russia or Czech Republic as an example. Dark and depressing. Gulag!
October 5th, 2005 at 9:15 am
Gulagged!! OW, my freedoms!
Well, for one, I don’t think those Latin Americans use their own product. I think they simply export it to the US. I can’t imagine people living that poor could afford elicit drugs.
I’ve read articles on this before and my impression that it was more a function of sunlight. Countries closer to the equator (carribean, mediterranean) tended to be happier because they simply got more sun (thus making them happier). Whereas I thought colder countries were traditionally less happy (because they got less sun). However I was surprised to find that many scandinavian countries were pretty happy.
I was talking to Mahyar about this and he was saying that Denmark has the highest suicide rates per capita. This was really surprising because Denmark was one of the happiest countries on that diagram.
Here’s an interesting excerpt for a random link I found on the web trying to investigate this. Take it with a grain of salt since it’s a random link:
“Poverty is not a good suicide predictor. Sweden and Denmark both have high per-capita income as well as comprehensive social welfare for the aged. They also both have high suicide rates among the elderly, as well as in the general population. Greece and Mexico, which have a far lower (economic) standard-of-living than Sweden and Denmark, have particularly low rates, though higher in the elderly than in the general population. Interestingly, during times of economic prosperity, the elderly suicide rate goes down while the suicide rate of younger adults goes up in the U.S.”