How Happy is the World?

The Data

The World Happiness Report is an annual publication from the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) of the United Nations. It ranks over 150 countries by a happiness rank from 0 to 10, with higher values signifying greator levels of happiness.

Each nation's score is broken down into six components and dystopia residual, which show estimates for how much each of these factors contribute to a nation's happiness score. The six components, money (GDP per capita), family/friend relations, health, freedom, generosity and trust in government are six globally recognized metrics that generally make people happier. The World Happiness Report is derived from the Gallup World Poll which asks users to rate thier lives on a 0 to 10 ladder scale, with 10 being the best possible life. The sample size for each nation is typicaly about 1000 respondents, however not all countries respond.

Dystopian residual accounts for any points in the happiness score of a country that cannot be attributed to one of the six breakdown categories. Since happiness scores are obtained by asking people to rate their current happiness on a 0 to 10 scale, it is not possible to definitvely know how much each metric accounted for their score. The degree of each metric is infered from the happiness scores and the remaining difference between the sum of the metrics and the happiness score itself is recorded as dystopia residual. This residual score is made up of other factors that make people happy as well as inaccuracies in determining how each metric is associated with a score. People have different factors that make them happy and not all people place equal importance on each metric.

Happiness Distribution

Before looking at the data, keep in mind that happiness ranks may distort happiness scores. Rank is just a means to put scores into perspective with one another, so depending on how close scores are, rank may make countries seem more or less happy relative to one another than they actually are. The distribution graph below groups countries together that have happiness scores that fall between the x-axis value of a point and the x-value of the next point. For example if a point has x-axis value 4.5, its y axis value is the number of countries that have a happiness score between 4.5 and 5.