2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. The Global Trajectory of Life Evaluations

7. Life Evaluations in the Five Largest Countries

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

9. Sources of Global Negative Affect over Time

10. Happiness Rankings
Top and Bottom 10

11. 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

12. Comparing United States to Canada (-0.387)

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

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

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

16. 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

17. 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

21. But urban strangers are much kinder than you think

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

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

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

26. Adding immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean

27. and Southern and Eastern Europe

28. and East and Southeast Asia

29. and Africa

30. 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

31. 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