World Happiness Report 2019 Co-Editors: John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard, Jeffrey D. Sachs Associate Editors: Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Haifang Huang, Shun Wang, and Lara B. Aknin TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Happiness and Community: An Overview John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey D. Sachs 2. Changing World Happiness John F. Helliwell, Haifang Huang and Shun Wang 3. Happiness and Voting Behaviour George Ward 4. Happiness and Prosocial Behavior: An Evaluation of the Evidence Lara B. Aknin, Ashley V. Whillans, Michael I. Norton and Elizabeth W. Dunn 5. The Sad State of Happiness in the United States and the Role of Digital Media Jean M. Twenge 6. Big Data and Well-being Clément Bellet and Paul Frijters 7. Addiction and Unhappiness in America Jeffrey D. Sachs

Happiness Measures Life Evaluations: Cantril Ladder Positive Affect Respondents’ assessment of their current life based on an 11-point scale whereby 0 designates one’s worst possible life and 10 denotes the best possible life respondents can imagine for themselves Positive Affect The average of previous-day affect measures for happiness, laughter, and enjoyment Negative Affect The average of previous-day affect measures for worry, sadness, and anger

Measurement using Life Evaluations Provides a single umbrella measure of welfare with inherent reality Enables research on the determinants of better lives Error bands show relevance of differences across countries and sub-groups Supports cost/benefit analysis with a well-being focus

Six Supports for Better Lives Material support (GDP per capita) Social support (someone to count on) Healthy Life Expectancy Freedom (to make life choices) Generosity (giving, and more..) Trust (freedom from corruption, plus..) No 7? Inequality of happiness matters

The Global Trajectory of Life Evaluations

Life Evaluations in the Five Largest Countries

Global Trajectories of Positive and Negative Affect (blue=pop weighted)

Sources of Global Negative Affect over Time

Happiness Rankings Top and Bottom 10 2016-2018

Table 2.1: Regressions to Explain Average Happiness across Countries (Pooled OLS) Dependent Variable Independent Variable Cantril Ladder (0-10) Positive Affect (0-1) Negative Affect Log GDP per capita 0.318 -.011 0.008 0.338   (0.066)*** (0.01) (0.008) (0.065)*** Social support 2.422 0.253 -.313 1.977 (0.381)*** (0.05)*** (0.051)*** (0.397)*** Healthy life expectancy at birth 0.033 0.001 0.002 0.03 (0.01)*** (0.001) Freedom to make life choices 1.164 0.352 -.072 0.461 (0.3)*** (0.04)*** (0.041)* (0.287) Generosity 0.635 0.137 0.351 (0.277)** (0.03)*** (0.028) (0.279) Perceptions of corruption -.540 0.025 0.094 -.612 (0.294)* (0.027) (0.024)*** (0.287)** Positive affect 2.063 (0.384)*** Negative affect 0.242 (0.429) Year fixed effects Included Number of countries 157 Number of obs. 1,516 1,513 1,515 1,512 Adjusted R-squared 0.74 0.476 0.27 0.76

Comparing United States to Canada (-0.387)

Comparing United States to Canada (-0 Comparing United States to Canada (-0.387) including inequality of well-being

Changes in United States: 2005-08 ~ 2016-18 (-0 Changes in United States: 2005-08 ~ 2016-18 (-0.432) including inequality of well-being

Changes in Canada: 2005-08 ~ 2016-18 (-0 Changes in Canada: 2005-08 ~ 2016-18 (-0.183) including inequality of well-being

Explaining average happiness across and within countries with inequality (1) (2) (3) (4) Log GDP per capita 0.328*** 0.934*** 0.308*** 0.821*** (0.065) (0.209) (0.063) (0.203) Social support 2.473*** 1.421*** 2.099*** 1.044*** (0.374) (0.333) (0.389) (0.331) Healthy life expectancy at birth 0.031*** -0.041*** 0.029*** -0.017 (0.009) (0.012) (0.011) Freedom to make life choices 1.018*** 0.784*** 1.067*** 0.788*** (0.282) (0.200) (0.261) (0.196) Generosity 0.684** 0.384** 0.641** 0.451** (0.274) (0.189) (0.270) (0.186) Perceptions of corruption -0.550* -0.549** -0.517* -0.543** (0.288) (0.230) (0.290) (0.223) P75/P25 -0.247*** -0.177*** (0.066) (0.055) Country fixed effects X Observations 1,516 Adj. R2 0.735 0.902 0.75 0.907 Within R2 0.154 0.192

Research results show Importance of the social context People happiest where they know, trust, help and enjoy each other People happier where equality of well-being is less The disadvantaged gain most from from living in a high trust environment and where happiness inequality is less

But urban strangers are much kinder than you think

Age Matters: SWL effects of community belonging are greater at higher ages

Migration matters: moving to Canada and the UK from 70 countries

SWL Convergence of Immigrants from North America, W. Europe and Oceania

Adding immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean

and Southern and Eastern Europe

and East and Southeast Asia

and Africa

Sustainable happiness requires Ensuring that today’s activities improve tomorrow’s possibilities Paying more attention to the distribution of happiness Building trust to support resilience Broadening social identities to create a sense of ‘we’ covering other places, nations, and generations via social partnerships, aiming to ioncrease resilience

To get there requires - Measuring subjective well-being in all major social and health surveys. Statistics Canada now does this, extensions needed in coverage for indigenous and labour market surveys, etc. Monitoring subjective well-being before, during and after policy interventions. The Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC) now does this for all its evaluations, and the Office of Literacy and Essential Skills (OLES), a key program branch at Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) has just done the same. via social partnerships, aiming to ioncrease resilience