Class 15 - Measuring Happiness wellbeing.pptx

Measuring Happiness

1. GEHP111 – Happiness and Wellbeing Class 15 – Measuring Happiness

2. Measuring Happiness

3. UN World Happiness Report Measurement of subjective well-being relies on three main well-being indicators: life evaluations, positive emotions, and negative emotions  Life-evaluations: The report uses a specific question about life satisfaction from the Gallop World Poll, which has been collecting data since 2005-6 and covers over 150 countries “Please imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?”

4. World Happiness Report Positive emotions: Positive affect is measured for countries by the average of individual yes or no answers for three questions about emotions experienced or not on the previous day: laughter, enjoyment, and learning or doing something interesting Negative emotions:  Negative affect is measured for countries by the average of individual yes or no answers about three emotions experienced on the previous day: worry, sadness, and anger. Life evaluations provide the most informative measure for international comparisons because they capture quality of life in a more complete and stable way than emotional reports based on daily experiences. Emotions experienced the previous day are well explained by events of the day being asked about, while life evaluations more closely reflect the circumstances of life as a whole.

5. World Happiness Report But there are also six other key variables used by researchers in this report on global happiness: GDP per capita Healthy life expectancy Social support Freedom of choice Generosity Perceptions of corruption

6. World Happiness Report While average income and life expectancy definitely carry their weight in explaining happiness levels, what’s more interesting are the Gallup World Poll (GWP) questions about the other, more subjective variables. Social support “If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them?” Freedom to make life choices “Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?” Generosity “Have you donated money to a charity in the past month?” Perceptions of corruption “Is corruption widespread throughout the government or not?” “Is corruption widespread within businesses or not?”

7. New Questions In 2020 for the first time, the Gallup World Poll asked questions on the experience of Your life being in balance Feeling at peace with your life Experiencing calm for a lot of the day Preferring a calm life to an exciting life Focus on caring for others or self. These ‘low arousal positive emotions’ are more associated with Asian conceptions of happiness But experiences of balance, peace, and calm are more prevalent in Western countries, which also experience the highest levels of satisfaction – and they are less prevalent in poorer countries, including those in East Asia. The majority of people in almost every country prefer a calmer life to an exciting one. But that preference is particularly high in the poorer countries, especially in Africa, where actual calm is low. Both balance and peace contribute strongly to a satisfying life in all regions of the world.

8. OECD Annual Happiness Index This report uses 11 variables to measure happiness: Housing: rooms per person, dwellings with access to basic facilities, and housing expenditure are key factors tied to happiness Income: household net adjusted disposable income (income after taxes), and household financial wealth (assets minus liabilities) Work: though closely related to income, a job also helps individuals stay connected with society, build self-esteem and develop skills and competencies, so the report takes account of countries’ employment rate Community: the percent of citizens who feel they know someone they could rely on in time of need Education: educated individuals live longer, participate more actively in politics and in the community where they live, commit fewer crimes and rely less on social assistance

9. OECD Annual Happiness Index Environment: An unspoiled environment is a source of satisfaction, improves mental well-being, allows people to recover from the stress of everyday life and to perform physical activity Civic Engagement: a cohesive society is one where citizens have a high degree of confidence in their governmental institutions and public administration Health: life expectancy and self-reported health Life satisfaction: people in each country measured their life-satisfaction on a 1-10 scale Safety: low assault and homicide rates as a measure of overall happiness Life-work balance: Measuring the number of people working very long hours, as well as time devoted to leisure and personal care

10. The Happiness Index This is developed by a voluntary network of scholars and organization which use 10 variables to measure happiness: Psychological Well-Being: optimism, senses of purpose and of accomplishment; Health: energy level and ability to perform everyday activities; Time Balance: enjoyment, feeling rushed, and sense of leisure; Community: sense of belonging, volunteerism, and sense of safety; Social Support: satisfaction with friends and family, feeling loved, and feeling lonely; Education, Arts, and Culture : access to cultural and educational events and diversity; Environment: access to nature, pollution, and conservation; Governance: trust in government, sense of corruption, and competency; Material Well-Being: financial security and meeting basic needs Work: compensation, autonomy, and productivity. (Happiness Alliance, 2014c)

11. World Values Survey The World Values Survey includes both a ‘happiness question’ and a ‘life satisfaction’ question ,reflecting the reality that well-being includes both a cognitive and affective or emotional aspect “Taking all things together, would you say you are ( i ) Very happy, (ii) Rather happy, (iii) Not very happy or (iv) Not at all happy”.  All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days? Using a scale on which 1 means you are “completely dissatisfied” and 10 means you are “completely satisfied” where would you put your satisfaction with your life as a whole?

12. Using social media to measure happiness Millions of people share their thoughts and feelings online via social media each day Automated analysis of social media data offers exciting promise for measuring trends in emotions The methods used include counts of emotional words, and machine learning methods which also take into account the structure and meaning of sentences. Two case studies of Twitter examined the daily and weekly movements of positive and negative emotions, including sadness and anxiety, before and during COVID-19 in the UK and Austria These were then compared with the measurements of these emotions as recorded in standard social surveys of the population The two measures of emotion (social-media-based and survey-based) tracked each other extraordinarily well Measures of emotion from social media can effectively complement measures based on social surveys when robust methods are applied 

13. Some findings of the Happiness Reports Life satisfaction and happiness vary widely both within and among countries. Richer people tend to be happier than poorer people in the same country. Richer countries tend to have higher average happiness levels Across time, most countries that have experienced sustained economic growth have seen increasing happiness levels. Countries where people tend to live longer are also countries where people tend to say more often that they are satisfied with their lives. A similar relationship holds for other health outcomes 

14. Some findings of the Happiness Reports Culture and history shared by people in a given society matter for self-reported life satisfaction Latin American countries tend to have a higher subjective well-being than other countries with comparable levels of economic development.  Ex-communist countries tend to have lower subjective well-being than other countries with comparable characteristics and levels of economic development. Diener and Suh (2002) write: “In recent years cultural differences in subjective well-being have been explored, with a realization that there are profound differences in what makes people happy. Self-esteem, for example, is less strongly associated with life satisfaction, and extraversion is less strongly associated with pleasant affect in collectivist cultures than in individualist cultures” Countries where people feel free to choose and control their lives tend to be countries where people are happier

15. Trends since 2008 The ten countries with the largest gains from 2008-2012 to 2019-2021 were, in order, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Togo, Bahrain, Latvia, Benin, Guinea and Armenia. The ten countries with the largest drops were Lebanon, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Jordan, Zambia, India, Mexico and Botswana. Smiling or laughing a lot during the previous day is the most common of all the components of positive affect, and has been on a slightly rising trend over the past 15 years, slipping slightly during the pandemic years 2020 and 2021. Enjoyment started at the same frequency as laughter, but by 2021 it was significantly less common. Doing or learning something interesting fell over the first five years of the survey but has been on a generally rising trend since 2011. Positive affect, as the average of the three measures, has been more stable than any of the components, with no discernable trend in its average value of about 0.66 on the scale from 0 to 1.

16. Trends since 2008 After five reasonably stable years (2005/06 through 2010), worry and sadness have been rising over the past ten years, especially during 2020, the first year of COVID-19, before improving somewhat in 2021. Anger remains much less frequent, with no significant trend changes. The average for negative affect was about 0.25 for the first five years and followed a fairly steady upward trend since, with a jump in 2020 and mostly returning to the underlying trend in 2021. Stress, which is not a component of the negative affect measure, was also fairly constant for the first five years but has increased steadily ever since, faster than worry or sadness, with its steepest increase in 2020. There has been growth in both real GDP per capita and healthy life expectancy, fairly constant levels of social support, declines in perceived corruption, and substantial average growth in the extent to which people feel they have the freedom to make key life choices and in helping strangers and other forms of benevolence Finally, we show that average levels of trust in public institutions have generally grown slightly since 2012.

17. The following table, adapted from Kahneman and Krueger (2006) 26 , provides a list of the variables that researchers have found to be related to self-reported happiness and life satisfaction Correlates of high life satisfaction and happiness Smiling frequency Smiling with the eyes ("unfakeable smile") Ratings of one's happiness made by friends Frequent verbal expressions of positive emotions Sociability and extraversion Sleep quality Happiness of close relatives Self-reported health High income, and high income rank in a reference group Active involvement in religion Recent positive changes of circumstances (increased income, marriage)