Depending on how you look at the world, the happiest people on earth live either in Denmark, or Vanuatu, an island nation in the South Pacific.
According to a major study released last year that analyzed the results of more than 100 global surveys on well-being, the Dutch led the world in well-being and life satisfaction. Canada squeaked into the top 10. The United States came in 23rd.
But ask the question from another angle: Which country is the most efficient at being happy, and Canadians become downright grim, falling to 111th out of 178 countries on the Happy Planet Index. That study, published by the New Economic Foundation in the UK, divided life-satisfaction surveys and life expectancy statistics against the how much land was needed to sustain the consumption of each citizen in a particular country.
Canada, unsurprisingly, earns high scores in the first two rankings, which are heavily influenced by health, wealth, and education. But the country's ecological footprint kicks Canadians into the sad ranks of Poland and Macedonia. (Canadians can again take some solace in the American score, where consumer culture drops them to 150, putting the U.S. two spots above Rwanda.) As the study's authors point out, the most happy-efficient people live on islands. And Germans get the same amount of time on earth and spend it just as happily as Americans – at a 50 per cent discount for the environment.
But who should get the credit for boosting Canada's high level of well-being? It seems the applause should go to New Brunswick, where residents in a new national survey called the Relative Happiness Index self-reported the most joyful lives. In that study, which polled 2,400 people across the country, the east is happier than the west: Newfoundland and P.E.I. came second and third, Ontario placed fourth, Alberta finished eighth.
“It's about the glass,” says Pierre Cote, a Quebec City marketing consultant who created the study, to explain New Brunswick's score. “I think maybe they are happier with what they have.” For instance, people surveyed in New Brunswick were the least likely to say that modern society made happiness more difficult to achieve, and the most likely to say people are as happy today as they had been in the past or will be in the future.
As far as individual happiness goes, health and family and having a job you like counts for more in Canada, according to the study, than wealth and sex.
And about 20 per cent of the people surveyed gave their happiness a perfect score – 10 out of 10. Are they the lucky ones? Again, it's all about perspective. Pierre Cote says he found this last finding among the most discouraging. “If you're that happy, it's time to die,” he said. “Life is about the pursuit of happiness.”
