World Happiness Report Shows How We Weathered the Pandemic
Around the world, trust and generosity helped us cope with crisis.
Throughout
2020, researchers called people across nearly 100 countries to ask how they
were doing.
By Kira M. Newman
Yes, we experienced more sadness, worry, and stress in 2020 than in previous years. However, on average, there was no change in our positive feelings, or our satisfaction with life. While lockdowns, uncertainty, and loss hit our mental health hard last spring, there’s evidence to suggest that many people recovered over the course of the summer and fall.
The secret ingredient? Our trust in each other seems to have been crucial in weathering this crisis, both as individuals and as societies.
Bouncing back
The World Happiness Report ranks the happiest countries based on a simple question: on a scale of 0-10, with the best possible life for you as 10 and the worst one as 0, where do you stand?
As in years past, the Scandinavian countries ranked as the happiest in the world, with Finland, Iceland, Denmark, and Switzerland at the top in 2020. As economist Baron Richard Layard of the London School of Economics explained in a Greater Good interview conducted in the wake of the 2018 World Happiness Report:
We
should learn from the Scandinavian countries, which are uniformly happier
than, for example, the U.K. or the United States. There are important lessons
to be learned: You don’t have to turn your back on economics, but it’s not the
be-all end-all. Human relationships are extremely important and need to be
given a great deal of attention—we shouldn’t sacrifice them in the name of
economic efficiency. Neither should we sacrifice human relationships at work,
give up our work-life balance, or drive our children crazy at their high
schools.
The researchers also ask participants about their
experiences the day before, including positive emotions (whether they smiled,
laughed, or felt enjoyment) and negative ones (whether they felt worried, sad,
or angry). While positive emotions didn’t change in 2020 compared to previous
years, more people felt worried (42%, up from 38%) and sad (26%, up from
23%).
When researchers drilled down to look at surveys conducted
over the course of 2020, some hopeful patterns emerged.
Around the
beginning of lockdowns, when many of the first studies were done, the shock to
our mental health was clear. We felt anxious, depressed, traumatized, and
lonely. But studies that followed people over the summer and into the fall
began to look more positive.
One U.K. study identified several different trajectories that people followed. Nearly 23% had poor mental health
in April and September, continuing to struggle as the pandemic dragged on.
These were more likely to be young people, women over 65, and people who lost
work during the year. Another 21% struggled in April but improved
significantly by September. And over 40% of people were able to cope with the
pandemic relatively well at both times.
Similarly, a study in the United States saw overall improvements in people’s anxiety, depression, and
stress across the middle of 2020. After peaking near the beginning of April,
mental health problems gradually lessened over time before stabilizing around
July. Overall, the United States ranked 14th in happiness in the world, up
from 18th in 2019, rating life overall as just over a 7 on a scale of 0-10.
Happiness is local
At an even more granular level, our
emotions seem to shift day by day based on what’s happening in our local
area.
For example, the report’s analysis of the social network Sina
Weibo (similar to Twitter) found that on days with more new COVID-19 cases in
China, Weibo users expressed lower happiness. This dip was less dramatic when
stricter lockdown policies were in place, perhaps because people felt more
protected or hopeful for the future. On days when more people recovered from
COVID, users expressed more happiness online.
Researchers also used
Google searches to investigate people’s moods in Hong Kong, Japan, South
Korea, and Taiwan. On days with more new COVID cases in the country, people’s
searches were more negative, touching on topics like apathy and fear. Again,
stricter lockdown policies seemed to offset fears about rising case counts.
And when more COVID patients recovered that day, people’s searches weren’t as
frantic.
What makes us this resilient, even if it feels like we’re
not?
Across the world, people tend to believe their lives are going
better when they have money, health, and someone to count on, and when they’re
generous to others. More satisfied people feel free to make life decisions and
confident in public institutions. These factors still mattered in 2020, but
the pandemic seemed to shift their importance slightly. While income became
less important to happiness, for example, being generous became more
important.
We need trust in a crisis
In fact, the
authors write, one of the reasons why we showed so much resilience may have
been the trust that many people have in their communities. To gauge that
trust, researchers ask people around the world whether they believe their lost
wallet would be returned by a neighbor, stranger, or police officer. Answering
yes to that question seems to be vital to well-being—even more so than being
employed or having high income.
This year, our sense of trust was
deepened when we saw the young helping the old, people coming together online
for support, and others creating care packages for health care workers. The
authors write:
The pandemic has provided many chances to see the
kindness of others. If seeing these kindnesses has been a pleasant surprise,
then the resulting increase in perceived benevolence will help to offset the
more widely recognized costs of uncertain income and employment, health risks,
and disrupted social lives.
If this all sounds like too rosy a
picture, it might be. Forced to conduct phone surveys, the World Happiness
Report may not have reached the populations hit hardest by the pandemic—those
in nursing homes and prisons; the homeless; the burned-out, working,
homeschooling parents who have no time for a telephone call. And while we
showed resilience as a globe, it was uneven. In many ways, the pandemic seems
to have exacerbated existing inequalities in people’s health and well-being.
And it’s not over yet.
Among its many disruptions to our lives,
COVID has brought the topic of mental health to the fore. “Mental health has
quickly risen high on policymakers’ and researchers’ agenda,” the report
authors observe. Going forward, mental health will continue to be an important
part of the conversations in our families, our communities, and our
governments.