Previous surveys have tended to find that richer countries report being generally happier, but the new research, which looked at a wider range of indicators, showed the opposite.
“We see a negative relationship between GDP and meaning in life,” said Dr Tyler VanderWeele, professor of epidemiology at Harvard University.
The search ever goes on. Now that socialism is proven to make us poorer we must find out that being poorer really makes us happier so that we can be socialist.
OK, fair enough. Best that we boost happiness in the developing world by cutting foreign aid to zero and immediately deport the dinghy moochers, for their own good.
Perhaps Tyler VanderWeele should be deported with them, Marius??
“Researchers were surprised to see that Indonesia topped the table for “flourishing”, followed by Mexico and the Philippines.”
And yet, there’s lots of people that leave these countries to work elsewhere and not many going the other way.
Maybe the sort of people who are internally happy stay. The sort of people who are happy if they have guacamole, tequila, a mariachi band in the local bar now and again, and not much else. And the less internally happy people who want a BMW or to do something extraordinary leave.
And it’s probably the case that the latter people are less content. Driven people tend to be. James Cameron is still at the cutting edge of movie VFX at the age of 70. He could have taken the giant pile of money from Terminator 2, or maybe True Lies, Titanic, bought a house in the country and never worked again.
There’s a big difference between being “happy”, and “finding meaning in life”.
Lots of people are deeply unhappy, but find life meaningful. And the more we define happiness to be like pleasure, the more we find that happy people can get by with thought of life’s meaning.
People with Down’s syndrome are always happy.
Therefore the lower your IQ the happier you are.
Are African’s happier than wypipo or (non-Pakistani) Asians?
Well I suppose he does have a point. You can be very happy with little if you don’t know any better. And it’s being incontent, & thus unhappy, makes you strive for more. This some sort of new revelation? Some people find a level of contentment & other’s don’t. So what? Don’t think you’d find much contentment by making them poorer
Divorce makes you unhappy.
Does that mean we should ban it to increase the general happiness level?
It does seem that the Medical School at Harvard is home to a disproportionate number of crooks and bullies. Do they actually set out to hire such people?
philip: No they are not. They get pissed off about stuff they don’t like like everyone else. They do have less stuff to be pissed off about though.
It could be because in the richer countries the rich lecture the poor on how they should be even poorer as its for the good of the planet and in the poor countries the rich just honestly oppress the poor.
You can respect a man that is honest about beating you for fun. You can’t respect a man that claims to be beating you for your own good.
“I’d rather cry in a Jaguar than a bus.”
‘“We see a negative relationship between GDP and meaning in life,” said Dr Tyler VanderWeele’
Life has meaning ?!?!