Measuring happiness sounds kind of like diagraming a joke. You might learn something, but it probably won’t be either happy or funny.
Still, studying the elusive quality of happiness can be important, if for no other reason than to raise interesting questions about why some people have it and others don’t.
Speaking of which, what is it with those happy Scandinavians?
About a week ago, I was walking with my wife through the center of Eskilstuna, a city in Sweden about a 90-minute drive west of Stockholm. We were there for the unhappy task of arranging a funeral for her uncle and trying to settle his estate.
But that wasn’t what got me thinking about happiness. It was the weather, and everything around us.
Still, studying the elusive quality of happiness can be important, if for no other reason than to raise interesting questions about why some people have it and others don’t.
Speaking of which, what is it with those happy Scandinavians?
About a week ago, I was walking with my wife through the center of Eskilstuna, a city in Sweden about a 90-minute drive west of Stockholm. We were there for the unhappy task of arranging a funeral for her uncle and trying to settle his estate.
But that wasn’t what got me thinking about happiness. It was the weather, and everything around us.
I knew that, somewhere on the planet, spring training baseball was underway and birds were singing. But on this mid-March day in Eskilstuna, an azure sky and bright sun meant nothing. A relentless wind had dropped the “real feel temperature” as my phone’s weather app put it, to 17 degrees fahrenheit. We were bundled, yet miserably and unhappily cold.
Winter in Sweden is long and dark. Income taxes are high. Gas prices are at levels that would cause riots in the United States, and the green economy requires people, at least in Eskilstuna, to sort their garbage into multiple color-coded bags. I guess that at least gives them something to do while huddled inside half the year. But even at McDonald’s, customers have to sort their waste into a half-dozen different receptacles.
And yet, these are among the happiest people on earth on a variety of rankings. What are we to learn from that?
The latest to gush about Nordic people is the World Happiness Report, released on World Happiness Day last Wednesday as a collaboration of Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre and the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
To be fair, the Swedes came in only fourth in this year’s report, but they were predictably behind their Scandinavian friends Iceland, Denmark and, in the top spot for the seventh straight year, Finland. Norway finished seventh. It’s pretty much all lutefisk and pickled herring parties at the top.
On the other hand, the U.S. dropped to a relatively unhappy 23rd place, dragged down by people under 30 who seem, as a group, to be having trouble smiling these days. The study found people aged 15-24 seem happier than older people in much of the world, but not here or in Western Europe, the Middle East, North Africa or South Asia.
That ought to make us all ponder.
Politicians in Utah and elsewhere, including Congress, might blame social media, and especially TikTok, for unhappiness among youngsters. There may be some truth to that. But the Happiness Report offers few concrete answers. Its value lies in its mission, which is to provide “the right information about what people say makes life worthwhile.” The rest is left up to us. So, let’s look at those Northern Europeans.
A piece by Jessica Yu for the Business Review at Berkeley suggests some reasons why the Nordics are happy. Social cohesion and a high level of trust lead the way, followed by the high quality of public services and low levels of income inequality.
Certainly, I have found a much greater trust in government and institutions among the people I interact with through frequent trips to Scandinavia than among Americans I know. People sort their garbage because they feel an obligation to, and because they trust it will be handled correctly by those who collect it. Certainly, you get a sense of relief knowing you aren’t going to unleash anti-government tirades by saying the wrong thing at a social gathering.
And, despite the moral hazards associated with subsidized higher education and health benefits, their presence does take a lot of worry out of life. Also, glorious summers make up for frozen winters.
But all is not perfect over there. People complain about immigration. Some complain about the extensive welfare programs. Economic realities have forced a retreat from many of those benefits in recent years. And too much income equality can rob people of the incentive to work hard. Unemployment in Sweden is just north of 8% and demand for labor is low.
But happiness goes deeper than those metrics. Understanding Nordic happiness, Yu wrote, requires looking at those nations “with a full picture of society in mind and the effect of other factors…” Many of the Swedes I know have different cultural expectations than we do.
That’s obvious when you go for a drive. With a few exceptions (such as the angry man who honked when I hesitated in a roundabout), Scandinavian drivers seem anxious to look out for one another, rather than to race to be first in some imaginary rally. They seem happy to slow down to let you merge.
But then, this sort of mutual respect may come from knowing how much they all had to pay for gas.
To be honest, we may not have it in us to become like Nordics. We may never learn to smile in the face of an arctic wind, and the things that work there may not work well here. That can be OK. The United States has done quite well with its own unique brand of creative chaos.
But we do seem to be treating each other with less respect, and this thing about the rising generation getting lost is not OK. Everyone, not just politicians, ought to be diagramming those problems to figure out what can be done.
Winter in Sweden is long and dark. Income taxes are high. Gas prices are at levels that would cause riots in the United States, and the green economy requires people, at least in Eskilstuna, to sort their garbage into multiple color-coded bags. I guess that at least gives them something to do while huddled inside half the year. But even at McDonald’s, customers have to sort their waste into a half-dozen different receptacles.
And yet, these are among the happiest people on earth on a variety of rankings. What are we to learn from that?
The latest to gush about Nordic people is the World Happiness Report, released on World Happiness Day last Wednesday as a collaboration of Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre and the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
To be fair, the Swedes came in only fourth in this year’s report, but they were predictably behind their Scandinavian friends Iceland, Denmark and, in the top spot for the seventh straight year, Finland. Norway finished seventh. It’s pretty much all lutefisk and pickled herring parties at the top.
On the other hand, the U.S. dropped to a relatively unhappy 23rd place, dragged down by people under 30 who seem, as a group, to be having trouble smiling these days. The study found people aged 15-24 seem happier than older people in much of the world, but not here or in Western Europe, the Middle East, North Africa or South Asia.
That ought to make us all ponder.
Politicians in Utah and elsewhere, including Congress, might blame social media, and especially TikTok, for unhappiness among youngsters. There may be some truth to that. But the Happiness Report offers few concrete answers. Its value lies in its mission, which is to provide “the right information about what people say makes life worthwhile.” The rest is left up to us. So, let’s look at those Northern Europeans.
A piece by Jessica Yu for the Business Review at Berkeley suggests some reasons why the Nordics are happy. Social cohesion and a high level of trust lead the way, followed by the high quality of public services and low levels of income inequality.
Certainly, I have found a much greater trust in government and institutions among the people I interact with through frequent trips to Scandinavia than among Americans I know. People sort their garbage because they feel an obligation to, and because they trust it will be handled correctly by those who collect it. Certainly, you get a sense of relief knowing you aren’t going to unleash anti-government tirades by saying the wrong thing at a social gathering.
And, despite the moral hazards associated with subsidized higher education and health benefits, their presence does take a lot of worry out of life. Also, glorious summers make up for frozen winters.
But all is not perfect over there. People complain about immigration. Some complain about the extensive welfare programs. Economic realities have forced a retreat from many of those benefits in recent years. And too much income equality can rob people of the incentive to work hard. Unemployment in Sweden is just north of 8% and demand for labor is low.
But happiness goes deeper than those metrics. Understanding Nordic happiness, Yu wrote, requires looking at those nations “with a full picture of society in mind and the effect of other factors…” Many of the Swedes I know have different cultural expectations than we do.
That’s obvious when you go for a drive. With a few exceptions (such as the angry man who honked when I hesitated in a roundabout), Scandinavian drivers seem anxious to look out for one another, rather than to race to be first in some imaginary rally. They seem happy to slow down to let you merge.
But then, this sort of mutual respect may come from knowing how much they all had to pay for gas.
To be honest, we may not have it in us to become like Nordics. We may never learn to smile in the face of an arctic wind, and the things that work there may not work well here. That can be OK. The United States has done quite well with its own unique brand of creative chaos.
But we do seem to be treating each other with less respect, and this thing about the rising generation getting lost is not OK. Everyone, not just politicians, ought to be diagramming those problems to figure out what can be done.
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