Look at the data and realize the utter nonsense of global happiness rankings

People are posting about the World Happiness Report 2023 (based on 2022 data). It gets interesting when you get the raw data from the report’s website and compare it to the World Bank’s most recent (2019) data for self-delete¹ (SD) rates per 100,000 population.

I’ve also included Greece on there, for comparison. Together with Israel, Greece has the lowest SD rates within the cohort:

And of course do consider that the topic of self-deletion is culturally-sensitive, and that SD situations may, in some countries, be underreported to preserve honor, dignity, etc. But anyway.

For a single-dimension ranking, divide the WHR2023 score by the SD rate:

With the exceptions of Israel and the UK, the other 18 countries in the WHR2023’s top 20 ranking are ranked between 66 and 114 out of 115 countries in the World Bank’s database for SD.

So, how much meaning does this “happiness” measure contain? How does the WHR account for the fact that they practically can’t ask the (sadly, many) people who self-deleted whether they are happy? Literally, survivorship bias.

And what does it mean that many of the countries that self-report as low-happiness also have the lowest SD rates globally (yes, ok, religiosity for sure plays a role in the reporting of those rates)?

Most interestingly, compare each country’s ranking position between the two datasets:

The x-y pairs are all over the place, with two important distinctions: Greece and Israel are top, and with the further exception of the UK, practically all other countries that are top-ranked in the WHR2023 were among the worst-ranked in terms of people lost per 100'000 population in 2019.

“Happiness” is such a nonsensical concept/thing to poll and report on a global level; it’s culturally dependent, individually defined, subjectively self-reported, and utterly meaningless when compared across countries.

But hey, don’t let that stop you from cheering about countries that are allegedly the most happy, and also where people are literally killing themselves the most.

Whatever makes for a good CNN article, eh?

Data from the WHR2023’s website and the World Bank’s SH.STA.SUIC.P5 indicator for OECD countries. Analysis mine.