I am Norwegian and wonder how much of this is cultural. Most people here know that the rest of the world has much lower living standards. So for many it is perhaps rude or shameful to claim to be unhappy or dissatisfied.<p>I know it says "subjective happiness" in the report, but I still suspect it might be an influence.
Of course the outcomes of this kind of research are largely dependent on way it is designed.<p>There is a similar study that finds Latin American countries to be among the happiest. Discussed here:<p><a href="http://www.livescience.com/50209-happiest-countries-latin-america.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.livescience.com/50209-happiest-countries-latin-am...</a>
1. Norway 146. Yemen
2. Denmark 147. South Sudan
3. Iceland 148. Liberia
4. Switzerland 149. Guinea
5. Finland 150. Togo
6. Netherlands 151. Rwanda
7. Canada 152. Syria
8. New Zealand 153. Tanzania
9. Australia 154. Burundi
10. Sweden<p>Will be interesting to see how spots 7, 8, 9 hold up going forward as many/most middle class people in these 3 countries increasingly find they cannot afford even a very modest home within reasonable commuting distance of work.<p>For example:<p><a href="http://www.greaterfool.ca/2017/03/17/outta-here/" rel="nofollow">http://www.greaterfool.ca/2017/03/17/outta-here/</a><p>"My wife, daughter and myself currently live in Newmarket in a detached home that we purchased our home in late 2014 for $590,000 and it’s worth $1.1 million. That’s quite the profit in 2.5 years. So an option we are leaning towards is selling, and then renting for until we are ready to leave town and go north or east."<p>If it was just single family homes in prime areas it might be understandable, but the "bubble", or whatever it is, is now creeping into rent, leaving nowhere to hide.
After visiting Norway in the summer, the only thing that would give me pause with regards to living there is the winter. I live at 41°N right now and I think winter has to much darkness. Imagining the opposite of the Norwegian summer I experienced is a bit much for me.
For anyone interested in the full report: <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/sdsn-whr2017/HR17_3-20-17.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://s3.amazonaws.com/sdsn-whr2017/HR17_3-20-17.pdf</a><p>The U.S is 14th.
I've always been borderline obsessed with Finland and Norway. It's easy to say the US should be more like them but they have the big advantage of being much smaller and MUCH more culturally homogeneous.
I wonder if the lack of ethnic diversity in the "happier" countries is a contributing factor:<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/16/a-revealing-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-ethnically-diverse-countries/?utm_term=.d5df93ee526b" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/16...</a>
Norway is great country to live. And IT jobs salaries are almost as good as in US ~ $100k <a href="https://jobsquery.it/jobs;page=1;tags=;sortBy=SALARY_DESC;query=;location=Norway" rel="nofollow">https://jobsquery.it/jobs;page=1;tags=;sortBy=SALARY_DESC;qu...</a>
I find these studies so biased. Asking questions trying to figure out how positive a person is, its just a bit non sense without taking into account culture.<p>Im from south Europe where in my opinion we are quite happy, but at the same time we love to complain. Its just cultural, it doesnt mean that we hate our lifes, we just like to be negative some times :)
I lived as well in a few countries of that list and I cannot say they are happier. I think they act happier.<p>Answering a "How are you today?" question differs among countries<p>In some countries people answer "awesome, and you?" and perhaps he/she just broke up with the couple.<p>In some other countries you would answe "Man, I feel so unlucky and terrible" but actually you just won lottery but rather than a million you got few thousand euros :)<p>just cultural... :)
One of the most depressing things I ever read is about Norwegians not having good ideas for spending their money, so the tend to opt for buying second and third holiday homes. I mean I am sure having holiday homes provides a certain degree of happiness, it was just the mundaneness and banality of the human condition that depressed me about it.
I'm wondering how this squares with the fact that Norway has the 13th highest suicide rate in the world (<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/suiciderate.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/suiciderate.html</a>). I know that suicide is often the product of mental illness rather than general unhappiness, but clearly Norway has a large number of people with some sort of depressive disorder, which I figured would lower them in terms of general unhappiness. In fact, most of the countries in the top 10 of this list have very high suicide rates...<p>EDIT: I'm an idiot, Norway actually has a rather low suicide rate, please disregard.
Most of the time, people that have more freedom are less happy. I remember stories I heard about people moving from Soviet Russia to the United States back in the early 80s. They were unhappy and stressed out because in the soviet union, they were assigned a job and the government took care of them. Here in the United States, you had to fend for yourself.<p>Freedom isn't always pleasant and happy, but it's better for the future of humanity. I've been all over the world and don't know anywhere that has as much freedom as the US.