Finland , Finland , Finland
The country where I want to be
Pony trekking or camping or just watching TV
Finland , Finland , Finland
It's the country for me

Imagine living in freezing temperatures and right next to Russia and still being happy. The Finns must be doing something right

Why the Nords are high-

ttps://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/04/finland-happiness-lagom-hygge.html

That choice of colour scale caused a measurable reduction in world happiness

It’s called Prozac.

Finland is 11th in the world for per capita antidepressant consumption.

Finland has it all

Why is Africa always the odd continent out in all these maps?

It's called feeling social pressure to self-report as happy so as to not inconvenience people with your problems

In one 2018 poll Finland was also the most racist among EU so... Weird correlation ;D

Pretty consistent with GDP per capitaI I’d think.

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Africa is a continent

Edit: the world is now a better place, be excellent to each other

I like how this is pretty much what you'd expect. Except Indians maybe slightly pessimistic.

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Fixed it for you

Ok, do you mean why are there African countries with no data? Or why are African countries towards the unfavourable end of the reported data?

Obviously the latter. African countries always seem to be on the far end of the scale on many issues. Like "countries where domino's pizza restaurants exists" or " the countries never visited by a sitting US president"

A lot of those are correlated with per capita wealth / economic development.

Come to think of it, the data gaps correlate with much the same thing

So why does Africa have so much lower per capita than every other continent

I didn't know, so I did a quick google. This link looked like it was on point: https://issafrica.org/iss-today/africa-is-losing-the-battle-against-extreme-poverty#:~:text=Bad%20governance%2C%20corruption%20and%20high,inequality%20also%20drive%20up%20poverty.&text=Africa's%20high%20fertility%20rates%20mean,Africa's%20high%20population%20growth%20rate.

>Africa’s inability to reduce its high extreme poverty rate has been attributed to numerous factors. One is the over-reliance on natural resources for growth instead of agricultural and rural development, which characterises 85% of Africans’ livelihoods. The higher initial poverty levels coupled with low asset ownership and restricted access to public services also make it difficult for households to take advantage of growth. Bad governance, corruption and high-income inequality also drive up poverty. >Africa’s high fertility rates mean that economic growth rates translate into smaller per capita income increases. While the extreme poverty rate will likely fall, the number of poor people will rise due to Africa’s high population growth rate

Yikes, it's like everything is going wrong at once. And I don't understand how they can have a high population growth rate when they also have a high poverty rate. Why are these people having so many children?

Strong correlation between low income and high infant mortality. Strong correlation between high infant mortality and high birth rates. Search YouTube for Hans Rosling ... Some incredible (and hopeful) videos on this sort of data

But if they're dying it should be canceling out the population boom

Birth rate overcompensates for higher infant mortality. As infant mortality drops, birth rate drops and population growth slows.

Seriously check out a Hans Rosling video it will blow your mind.

Here's one to get you started https://youtu.be/hVimVzgtD6w

After watching an episode of The Reluctant Traveler I can only assume Finland is the happiest country because they’re drunk all the time.

In terms of actual data, both could still hold, a country could simultaneously appear happy and depressed:

You could have the highest mean and a (relatively) high proportion of depression. But this display only shows the mean, not the extremes or the shape of the distribution.

I just think it’s a bit disingenuous to talk about happiest nations and not control for antidepressant consumption, because obviously there’s a deficit of happiness if people are turning to pills.

My feeling is that the happiest people probably live in places that are both prosperous and have a pleasant climate; the little European possessions of the Caribbean are probably a good example.

Right - If there was a non-pill-based measure of miserability, then there should be a spike in some of the northern countries simply due to lack of sunshine (and vitamin D).

You might still have some of the same countries show high average happiness due to income, public health systems etc etc

Protestant supremacy. Southern Euros may have siestas but they also have 20%+ youth unemployment.

Summers actually get hot in Finland. We have four seasons...

Got a link for that?

Canadian here, love my winters. We take part in a lot of social winter activities, skiing, curling, snowshoeing and winter camping. We’re all pretty content. We do travel to the sun, for us it’s mostly in May or November when the snow isn’t there to entertain us. Most of the people we know that go to the sun are not that fit or adventurous, that’s just my personal take.