OP-ED: Happiness in a globalised world, and why it is important By David Reiersgord reiersgord
Happiness is a difficult category to define. Ask a handful of people what makes them happy, and a handful of answers is likely to emerge. What makes people happy at one point in their lives might not be the case later. Happiness becomes even more complicated when contemplating what it means on a global scale. Life is complex and happiness, like other emotions, doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
Cognitive life evaluations measure how happy an individual might be, based on an individual’s assessment of their life. Using the, respondents were asked to rank the status of their life on a scale of 1-10. Alternatively, emotional reports are engaged with ranges of positive and negative affects. While life evaluations encourage one to reflect on whether their life makes them happy, an emotional report is more probing, asking one to consider what in their life makes them happy.
Of the three worldwide samples that use Cantril’s ladder to assess happiness, the weighted and unweighted samples provide interesting results. In the weighted sample, which is made up of each country’s share of the total world population, happiness remains relatively stable, but trends downward. However, in the unweighted sample, which is made up of the average of individual national averages, happiness trends upward.
When looking at regional trends of positive and negative affects in Africa, the results are even more interesting. In the Middle East and North Africa, positive affects have decreased, and negative affects have remained stable. Alternatively, while positive affects remain stable in Sub-Saharan Africa, negative affects have risen about one point from 2005-18, suggesting sub-Saharan Africa is becoming unhappier.
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