Think of the happiest country in the world. Does somewhere in Scandinavia come to mind? Well, a new study has found that we may be overlooking the truly happiest people in the world because they are not usually included in the rankings.
In global happiness rankings like the World Happiness Report (WHR), scientists tend to observe a correlation between high levels of life satisfaction and high income. However, these polls often do not distinguish small-scale Indigenous and local societies from whole nations. But, in some of these communities, money plays a very small role in everyday lives and livelihoods.
In fact, the new paper suggests that not all happiness is money-related. Instead, it reveals that some societies with low incomes (who depend on nature, rather than money) have remarkably high life satisfaction – which could even make them the happiest people in the world.
"The strong correlation frequently observed between income and life satisfaction is not universal and proves that wealth – as generated by industrialized economies – is not fundamentally required for humans to lead happy lives," said Prof Victoria Reyes-Garcia, senior author of the study.
Who are the happiest people in the world?
Though not conducted by the same research body as the WHR, this new study published in journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) measured happiness in a similar way. The WHR asks respondents to think of a ladder where the best possible life would be a 10 and the worst a 0. They then rate their lives on that scale.
For this study, the researchers translated into local languages the question: "Considering all aspects, how satisfied are you with your life on a scale from 0 to 10?”.
The team collected the responses to this question from 2,966 people from 19 Indigenous and local communities around the world. Only 64 per cent of the surveyed households in these communities received a cash income of any kind.
They found that the average score for these 19 communities was 6.8, with the lowest scores being 5.1 (the equivalent of Georgia or the Ivory Coast on the World Happiness Report).
But four of those communities scored higher than 8/10, which would make these small-scale societies the happiest people in the world if included in the WHR. That’s because in 2023, the WHR found that the highest-scoring countries were Finland (7.8), Denmark (7.6) and Iceland (7.5).
According to the authors, the highest scores were reported in Central and South America. These high figures, they say, are “despite many of these societies having suffered histories of marginalisation and oppression”.
The researchers say that the study results spell good news for sustainability in the face of climate change. That’s because the study suggests that people can achieve high levels of happiness without the need for resource-intensive economic growth.
They encourage future research to investigate the specific factors that influence happiness in societies where money is not central – such as family and social support, spirituality, and connections to the natural world.
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