Sunday, February 18, 2007

How happy are you?

How Happy is the World Today - Click here to find out.

This web site asks people how happy they are, and then shows the average happiness level broken down by country. The site automatically locates users' countries by IP address.

I remember seeing an article a few years ago (in the Economist?) which reported that the happiest countries in the world were Nigeria and Mexico, and the saddest was Romania.

Having taught jaded teenagers from about 60 countries, I have to say that sort of fits. In fact, my Romanian student and my Mexican student both agreed with the assessment.

I remember that the US and the UK were reported as being not so happy. And places of turmoil (like Nigeria) were.

It seems that affluence and happiness do not correlate.

read more digg story

4 comments:

Stephanie said...

I've sort of followed the series of stories on this and actually in this country, there is a correlation between happiness and affluence, but internationally, not so much. Weird, huh?

Elizabeth said...

Very weird. I've worked for and know some very, very rich people in this country--and they are the least happy people I know. And Pedro, the underpaid groundskeeper at work, is one of the happiest.

Elizabeth said...

And then there's affluenza: the malaise one gets from an unfulfilling ife of acquisition and consupmtion.

Stephanie said...

I'm afflicted.