Happiest Place on Earth (not Disneyland)

[TAPPY]

The "happiest place on Earth" isn't Disneyland: It's Denmark.

An emerging social science -- happiness research -- is identifying the happiest and unhappiest regions in the United States and around the world. It's also shattering stereotypes and folk beliefs about happiness: who's got it, who doesn't, and how to get it for yourself.

The Chronicle recently asked a leading happiness researcher -- psychologist Michael Hagerty, a professor of management at the University of California at Davis -- to analyze several decades of social surveys conducted by scholars around the globe.

The surveys had one question in common: How happy are you? They covered hundreds of thousands of people in more than 20 nations. Hagerty's analysis has led him to some fascinating, and occasionally counter-intuitive, conclusions:

-- Despite their reputation as carefree surfer dudes and beach babes, Californians and other inhabitants of the West Coast are not, on the whole, happier than the average American.

-- Despite all those European films depicting inhabitants of northern Europe as brooding depressives, the world's happiest nations are Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Luxembourg.

-- Despite all those Federico Fellini films in which everyone is happily yakking, making love and tossing pasta, Italians are the third-most-miserable people on Earth.

According to surveys, he notes, the most important sources of personal happiness are:

-- Close ties to friends and family;

-- Wide political freedom;

-- High income, and

-- A narrow gap between rich and poor.

"Those four factors have come across consistently, in national and international surveys over the last 30 years," says Hagerty, who is also a fellow in the International Society for Quality of Life Studies based in Blacksburg, Va.

According to his analysis, the United States is the fifth-happiest nation, a fact that baffles Hagerty. "It's amazing that the U.S. is that high," he says. "For the most part, the top-rated countries are small and homogeneous."

Could it have something to do with the high levels of happiness reported in rural parts of the United States? Hagerty points out that rural states -- "the heartland," in his words -- are consistently the happiest: "There's not a lot of migration out. Families stay stable."

The happiest states are what Hagerty calls "the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) region" -- Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi.

That finding might startle those who still cling to old stereotypes about those states as home to moonshine operators and Ku Klux Klansmen. It certainly surprised Hagerty, considering that "traditionally, they've been an economically depressed region."

The second-happiest region is also mostly rural: the "west north central" states of Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas. Despite their dour reputation in popular culture -- recall the brooding Scandinavian immigrants of radio storyteller Garrison Keillor's fictional Midwestern village, Lake Wobegon -- this region fell only 0.02 points short of tying the "TVA region" for happiest place in America.

By contrast, the data for the Pacific states clash with popular stereotypes.

Many inhabitants of the West Coast like to think of themselves as the cheerful antithesis of stereotypically materialistic, high-strung Easterners --
say, as sun-loving Gidgets, or as nature-revering John Muirs.
Yet the average happiness rating for California, Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Hawaii is precisely the same -- 7.29 on a 10-point scale -- as the U.S. average.

"I think Californians consider individual freedom and individual happiness quite important. But they've often sacrificed friends and family in order to move here from someplace else," Hagerty says.

When they arrive here, they find themselves in a culture full of people like themselves -- free spirits for whom it's less important to establish close personal ties than to fulfill individual goals by launching a dot-com, or finding one's inner child, or catching the perfect wave, or whatever.

At a global level, happiness research has led to some equally fascinating conclusions, some of which reinforce popular stereotypes and some of which shatter them.

The happiest countries, Hagerty finds, tend to have relatively small populations and to be situated in northern Europe. Denmark ranks far and away as the happiest nation on Earth, with a rating of 7.96 on a 10-point scale.

Why the huge international variation in happiness levels? An old-fashioned explanation -- climate variations -- won't cut it.

"The Netherlands, Denmark and Norway are overcast quite a lot, yet they're the happiest nations in the data," Hagerty points out. "The unhappiest are Portugal, Greece and Italy, which are sunny."

Socioeconomic explanations tend to be more persuasive: Denmark has "very high income and they're small and homogeneous. People there have a similar world view and a similar religion, so that it's easier for them to communicate and to understand each other's motives," Hagerty says. "They don't have race problems, they don't have crime problems, and they have political freedom."

Hagerty also suspects a correlation between the happiness of Northern European nations and their history of advanced social welfare systems. Such systems tend to smooth out income differences between rich and poor -- differences that, according to many different social surveys, rank among the major causes of social misery.

Japan and South Korea's low ratings are striking, Hagerty says, considering their huge increase in income and other social improvements in recent decades. The reason seems clear, though: Data indicate that in Asian cultures, people readily acknowledge their personal happiness is less important to them than "family prosperity and honor," he says.

Hagerty warns Chronicle readers not to take his chart too seriously. It is, after all, just a statistical overview, one that inevitably blurs dramatic variations in happiness from individual to individual, and from region to region.

THE HAPPY CHART

DENMARK is #1
NETHERLANDS
NORWAY
LUXEMBOURG
U.S.
MEXICO
PHILIPPINES
BRAZIL
IRELAND
BELGIUM
UNITED KINGDOM
GERMANY
SPAIN
SOUTH AFRICA
INDIA
FRANCE
JAPAN
SOUTH KOREA
ITALY
PORTUGAL
GREECE

From the SF Chronicle

[sctx]

Denmark????.....Dane never seemed that happy....maybe he was the one exception

[Just Lucky]

-- Wide political freedom;

-- High income, and

-- A narrow gap between rich and poor.

DENMARK is #1
NETHERLANDS
NORWAY
LUXEMBOURG

I wonder what type of government they have.

[Seakony]

Never been to those places but I do love Disneyland.

[Connie]

and I thought Vanuatu is "the happy place"?
(the article has been translated from German to English by google. The original article is from spiegel.de)

[Rissask]

Originally Posted by Just Lucky

I wonder what type of government they have.

Why, I don't know....could it be ...SOCIALISTIC??:p

[Dallas91]

Originally Posted by TAPPY

The happiest states are what Hagerty calls "the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) region" -- Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi.

I feel happier already!

[TimHorton]

We're #10
We're #10

[Icon oclast]

Originally Posted by Rissask

Why, I don't know....could it be ...SOCIALISTIC??:p

Then why is Canada 10th. Us rural Minnesta Scandinavians are the happiest of all. It's all in the genetics, that and an abundance of road beers.

[JEZ]

This survey should have included Playa. as the numbers of people who support our forum show, Playa is the happiest place ever!

[Doggiemom]

Originally Posted by JEZ

This survey should have included Playa. as the numbers of people who support our forum show, Playa is the happiest place ever!

I second that!!!!!!

[PlayadelSoul]

Originally Posted by Just Lucky

I wonder what type of government they have.

Does everything have to be about politics, with you?

I was wondering how diverse those countries were. In fact, I don't think you would call any of them a melting pot.

[Just Lucky]

Originally Posted by PlayadelSoul

Does everything have to be about politics, with you?

I was wondering how diverse those countries were. In fact, I don't think you would call any of them a melting pot.

I think you might be surprised. Let me know if you require links.

[PlayadelSoul]

Originally Posted by Just Lucky

I think you might be surprised. Let me know if you require links.

I have been to all of those countries. No links necessary.

[Rissask]

Originally Posted by PlayadelSoul

Does everything have to be about politics, with you?

I was wondering how diverse those countries were. In fact, I don't think you would call any of them a melting pot.

Wouldn't this topic, have pretty much everything to do with politics, though?