Covid didn’t decrease global happiness levels - because of the rise of "benevolent action" in the pandemic
We’re always interested in happiness indicators, to the extent that they provide an alternative to GDP as a measure of progress/development in a society. The latest World Happiness Report has noted something remarkable, reports the Guardian:
It claimed 6.7 million lives, locked down entire countries and triggered a global economic slump, but Covid-19 has not affected humankind’s happiness, an international study has found.
Interviews with more than 100,000 people across 137 countries found significantly higher levels of benevolence in all global regions than before the pandemic. And when asked to evaluate their lives on a scale of one to 10, people on average gave scores just as high in the 2020-22 Covid years as in 2017-19.
Things were slightly worse in western countries and slightly better in the rest of the world, but overall “the undoubted pains were offset by increases in the extent to which respondents had been able to discover and share the capacity to care for each other in difficult times,” the 10th World Happiness Report found.
Global measures of “misery” fell and despite higher death tolls among elderly people, those aged over 60 on average reported improvements in their happiness relative to younger groups.
“It’s amazing,” said John Helliwell, a professor of economics at the University of British Columbia and a co-editor of the report. “People ended up discovering their neighbours. People were checking in more regularly [with other generations] so that sense of isolation was not as much as you would expect … Even during these difficult years, positive emotions have remained twice as prevalent as negative ones, and feelings of positive social support twice as strong as those of loneliness.”
There are some expected regional differences, between the “west” and the “global south”. The Happiness Report’s tables display a harsh difference between the “west” and the “global south”. Out of the top 20 happiest countries, fifteen are in Europe (the others are US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel. Of the 20 least happy countries, thirteen were in Africa, next to Bangladesh, India and Jordan.
The full Global Happiness Report is here. In it they make an interesting conclusion about the determining conditions of happiness, from millions surveyed (p. 19):
…There is now the potential for a real well-being revolution, that is, a broad advance in human well-being achieved by deploying our knowledge, technologies, and ethical perspectives. The appetite for such an advance is growing, and the knowledge base of how to promote human well-being is exploding.
Based on what we have learned from the life evaluations of millions of survey respondents around the globe, we now more clearly understand the key factors at work. To explain the differences in well-being around the world, both within and among countries, the key factors include14
physical and mental health
human relationships (in the family, at work and in the community),
income and employment
character virtues, including pro-sociality and trust
social support personal freedom
lack of corruption, and effective government