The pursuit of happiness

Actually, the correlation is pretty clear:

If a country's native language is Scandinavian or Germanic (including English), your likely to be pretty happy.

But if not, well...

@Faedrus

Your rule can be simplified to if your language is Germanic (including English and Scandinavian languages)...

Plus the Finns

As seen in the chart the huge "rich-poor gap" in South America is gross. So the vast mayority are very poor and live in harsh conditions, while a few lucky one's take all that they can in their greedy hands.

Look at all those happy rich White people!!!!
(oh....are we supposed to say that?)

what a feminist index - our GDP measurement is getting so sentimental and way too romantic now! on life satisfaction index - i dread to think now if all the poor people tick up a high satisfaction box. it's not how much you have, but how much you don't know you don't have that would contribute to you being satisfied with your life.

i'm worried day and night how to feed my TE subscription. sadly, my neighbor shares no such concern with me - he doesn't even know what TE is.

Canada's only weak category appears to be Governance. You can blame the Harper Conservatives for that one.

Well done to Australia.

@ JGradus:

Sure, works for me.

We can call it the Faedrus-JGradus happiness correlation.

It sounds impressive at any rate.

Go back to the drawing board. No matter how you weight them, your criteria say that the people who live in countries at the top right are 5 to 9 times happier or contented than those in the lower left. Absurd.

Funny how france is so happy. I don't think the Better Life index ='s a how "happy people are with their lives" index. Because countries like France, which are shown to have a relatively high Better Life Index are leaders in the sales of anti-depressants.
Three ways why this could explain the poll rating:
1) The calculated teh results after everyone took their anti-depressants.
2) The French have obnoxiously high standards of living
3) The index overlooks some attributes which might tell a different story.

There is something racist about this plot

@fortimbras:
where do you see the south american inequality in this graph?
btw. Did you know the gini index is worse in the US than in Latin america?

Also, the y axis says "better life index". Not "happiness index".

The happiness index is pretty much the inversion of this one.

@The Gatsby

Income is the lowest category for Canada, not governance, and Canada's score for governance still exceeds or matches that of most other countries. Nice try though.

I notice that the well-being of Britain's major former colonies all appear to be higher than that of Britain itself. The result is reversed with Spain.

And New Zealand don't need no fancy-shmancy income.

Fun chart. Hit the recommend. Went through the link and had to wonder what the OEDC is smoking (one gets greeted by a pretty groovey flower chart for each country). Different from the staid OECD I remembered, coming out of the 50s, helping western european countries get back on their feet (or to paraphrase one poster, making sure richer white people are happy :-) ).

some thoughts though:
I would have thought Chile would have done better - Seemed like they accomplished much and would have been higher on the better life axis

Being an American, my suspicion is that in reality the US should be over to the left by a few notches and down towards the number 7 line (I thought the Swiss were richer, and never cared much for PPP)

Interesting that S. Korea seems to be on the lower end of the middle band for "a better life" - Would have thought higher since they have developed a leading manufacturing base (granted there is China and N. Korea to worry about economically and militarily respectively)

I hope to see Turkey rise both up and over in the next five years, but I take it the eastern part of the country may drag stats down while Westerners see only Istanbul and the west coast (like several of my relatives who have become quite enamored with the country).

Actually the graph tells us that people in New Zealand are happier than they should be according to their per person GDP. However, life in the USA and Norway is not as good as it should be according to their respective GDP per person.

GDP per person is wrong. Median income should be used.

Bill Gates makes a large portion of GDP, but his happiness weights the same as other citizens.

If the author wants to use GDP per person, it should be "adimensionalized"; for example comparing "better life index" to (median income/GDP).

The chart shows that Canada surpasses all the other countries even when its GDP is around $30,000 per person. For a long time I believed Canada is the best place in the world to live in. The U.S. with a higher GDP per person does not even come close. Australia is second followed by Sweden and other North European countries. Not Germany, not France, and not Britain. Satisfaction in life is not about how much you earn.

I am, by the way, Canadian. I live in Canada.

The correlation is less strong if you subtract "income" from the better life index, which one supposes should be done when it is being compared with income.

Nobody seems to have noticed that "income" is also one of the elements that make up the "better life index", which means the chart is plotting income vs. a combination of income+other stuff. Not really surprising that we find a strong correlation...