Boy, I sure am glad they managed to find a file photo of a guy with glasses smiling to illustrate the concept of "happiness". I might not have understood the article properly, without the benefit of the image.
The biggest problem that I can see with these kinds of surveys is that the shade of meaning of the word "happy" varies from language to language. Hell, even in English if you ask me if I'm "happy" then I won't be precisely sure that you mean.
Don't trust happiness studies. I'll say this for every single post about it.
Look where people are moving. Moving to a country, they are doing something right. Moving away, they're doing something wrong. Want to move away but it is against the law: fucked.
In response to this and raghus, I can't help but think checking where people are moving to is more of a marketing test than relevant information about happiness.
It is very patronizing to assume people make decisions that aren't in their best interest. You can certainly point to lots of irrational behavior, but generally people move to where their lives will be easier.
The biggest problem with happiness research is that there is no objective measure of happiness, and claims are relative. Poor in a village in Thailand = happy. Poor outside LA = unhappy.
During the War Between the States, the Lincoln government spread rumors in Ireland and other European countries that the streets in America were literally paved with gold. When impoverished immigrants showed up on Ellis Island, they were offered a choice between slaves wages in factories, and the draft.
Without complete information, people don't always make the best decisions.
It's a fact that the average person in Portugal would be in the bottom quintile in the US. You can make more money as a migrant farmer in California than you can as a white collar worker in Mexico, let alone the rest of Latin America.
So in the case of immigration to the US, the things they think match reality. This is actually a great example of people doing things they think are in their best interest that actually are.
Dang, I tried 4 different ways to counter that but I ended up disagreeing with myself. I think the "what they think is best but isn't" is a bigger issue with the moves people don't make - ie staying in an economically depressed town or country instead of moving somewhere you'd be better off. I have family that resisted moving to a big city for years because it was so expensive, then when they finally moved they couldn't believe how many jobs there were and how well they paid.
I'm pretty sure there is a psychological model for "activation energy" on making a decision that changes the status quo. Deciding not to X a lot easier than deciding to X. Hopefully someone who knows more about this can elaborate.
On the issue of cities vs. suburban, people drastically undervalue the increased variety and choice in cities. Economically speaking, wine is wine - despite the fact that a wine store with 1000 varieties is better than a corner store with 5. The rub is that this kind of value is difficult to account for.
City vs suburbs is a whole different story. I was talking about big metro area vs small town of 30K several hours from an airport.
I'd move back to the city in a second if I could afford it. The $/sqft is the reason we left. Kind of tough when there are 5 people living off my salary (me, wife, 2 kids, mother-in-law).
Indeed. For example, look at what Cubans are willing to go through to get out of Cuba: a high risk of dying on a voyage, and an large suicide rate.
Using statistics from the Cuban Health Ministry and Donate-Armada's own study of suicides in 1984, when she was working for the Health Ministry, the study argues that the island's people have been emotionally shattered since the failure of President Fidel Castro's plans for a record 10 million ton sugar harvest in 1970.
``It was the first break in the collective conscience regarding the revolution's ability to provide coherent answers to economic problems,'' said Donate-Armada, a psychologist who left Cuba in 1993.
The island's suicide rate nearly tripled after that catastrophe, from 8 per 100,000 people in 1969 to 23.2 per 100,000 in 1982, the study reported.
So bad was the crisis that in 1979 the government classified suicide statistics as state secrets, the study added, and began hiding them under other categories like ``violent deaths'' or ``other unclassified physiological illnesses.''
Naturally enough, the "New citizenships (per capita) (most recent) by country" is lead by Canada, a country with very a very open immigration policy. Likewise, Japan, which makes it very difficult for foreigners to nationalize, is near the bottom of the list.
I sometimes see graphs in magazines like The Economist or National Geographic. Generally speaking, it takes a bit of work to get this kind of data from governments
"Highest birth rate in Europe + highest divorce rate + highest percentage of women working outside the home = the best country in the world in which to live. There has to be something wrong with this equation. Put those three factors together - loads of children, broken homes, absent mothers - and what you have, surely, is a recipe for misery and social chaos. But no. Iceland, the block of sub-Arctic lava to which these statistics apply, tops the latest table of the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Index rankings, meaning that as a society and as an economy - in terms of wealth, health and education - they are champions of the world."
Yeah, this is pretty general. But I'm often interested in hearing the hacker point of view on topics outside technology.
For instance, one issue that tends to fascinate is why silicon valley is so far ahead of everyone else. I read an article (in BusinessWeek, I think) about tech centers in Europe -Barcelona and Copenhagen were listed.
I don't feel any particular need to escape San Francisco, which I absolutely love. But I've heard Copenhagen and Barcelona are extremely cool cities, and I'd dig checking them out.
Problem is, many of the elements of the Danes's happiness might night work well with startup culture. There's a powerful welfare state, and a high degree of homogeneity in the populace. Silicon Valley thrives on risk, failure, and diversity.
Who knows, maybe the Danes are too happy to be a great startup center. Maybe startups are a great way to build wealth, but not happiness, and in the end, they end up hurting a region. Or maybe that's all crap, and the happiness of Denmark will cause just the right people to move and/or stay there, and build an incredible tech community...
Either way, it seems like a good topic for conversation on hacker news.
It's the most boring nation too. While it feels a little like a utopia in many ways, its imperfections make it endlessly dull and unbearable for those not from there. I enjoyed the dull predictability of it for a day or two but then couldn't wait to leave.
...at any rate, I just watched it again. I revisted all the old pleasures (the mostly-coordinated high-socks back-up dancing, the pyscho eyebrow work of the keyboardist at 0:06, the guitarist who seems to be reconsidering the communism of his fathers, etc) and learned some new things. For instance, I'm beginning to think the whole thing has homosexual overtones...
The biggest problem that I can see with these kinds of surveys is that the shade of meaning of the word "happy" varies from language to language. Hell, even in English if you ask me if I'm "happy" then I won't be precisely sure that you mean.