A quantitative look at happiness
30 May 2021More questions than answers
Not too long ago, I took a happiness course on Coursera - “The science of well-being” by Laurie Santos. It is a fantastic, eye-opening course about what actually makes us happy, as opposed to what our brains make us think makes us happy.
After taking the course, lots of questions naturally came to mind: are all people happy on more or less the same level around the world? Does money really not make us happy? Can we predict collective happiness levels of societies by looking at suicide rates? All questions, no answers.
Data to the rescue
Naturally, to have a go at answering these, I had to find relevant data. The World Happiness Report data looked great for my purpose. I also found a suicide rates overview dataset which I later merged with the happiness one. Data cleaning clearly took the longest due to some inconsistencies and missing data in several datasets. However, afterwards, it was mostly smooth sailing.
Conclusions
All in all, the data mostly supported what I learned in the course, and gave me some answers to my questions. The most important conclusions are:
1. Money is not as important as we think in making us happy
2. Good relationships and good health are important contributors to our happiness
3. The degree to which you’re happy / likely to commit a suicide varies considerably with where you live in the world
4. High / low suicide rates don’t imply low / high happiness scores. In other words - suicide rates are poor predictors of happiness
Now go talk to your family and friends, have a walk in the nature or have a run - this is almost sure to make you more happy :)