Packages

library(tidyverse)
library(tidytext)
library(rmarkdown)
library(devtools)
library(jsonlite)
library(ggplot2)
library(textdata)

Introduction

Over the last ten years, there has been a transformation of public interest in happiness. Policy-makers worldwide increasingly see it as an important and overarching objective of public policy. With encouragement from the OECD, nearly all its member countries now measure the happiness of their people annually. The World Happiness Report of 2022 marks the 10th anniversary of these reports. I decided to do my project on this data set as it is the first happiness report since the pandemic began just a few years ago. I believe it is essential to remember the universal desire for happiness and the capacity of individuals to rally to each other’s support in times of great need and thought this data was a positive set to analyze.

Data

I got my data for this assignment from a Kaggle dataset (https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/mathurinache/world-happiness-report?select=2022.csv) that took the World Happiness Report 2022 directly from their site. The report used global survey data to report how people evaluate their own lives in more than 150 countries worldwide. I decided to focus specifically on the 2022 dataset to learn more about the influences measured that determined a countries happiness.

Hypothesis

My hypothesis is that most countries will have high happiness scores due to the pandemic decreasing over the past year and that support scores for countries will be high as well. I believe this hypothesis to be accurate as the world has begun to move on from the pandemic and go back to normal times. I also heavily believe that happiness scores could be less spread out as a whole due to a more hopeful time in our world.

World Happiness Score by Country

This first map shows all of the countries measured with their overall happiness scores. Happiness scores are made up of 6 characteristics: GDP per Capita, Freedom to Make Decisions, Generosity, Healthy Life Expectency, Perceptions of Corruption, and Social Support. From this graph, we can see that many countries do have similar scores overall. Out of the 150 countries measured, 105 of them have a happiness score over 5,000. The other 45 are below 5,000 but only 11 of those 45 countries are below a happiness score of 4,000. The top 5 countries with the highest happiness scores are Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland and the Netherlands. It is also interesting that all five of the Nordic countries are among the top 8 happiest countries.

I decided to research how the pandemic affected these areas and they did a fairly good job at eliminating cases quickly. The Nordics took strong precautions throughout the pandemic and were able to live fairly normal lives compared to other countries which could easily have contributed to such high happiness scores. In terms of the top 5 countries with the lowest scores, they are Afghanistan with a score of 2,404, followed by Lebanon (2,955), Zimbabwe (2,995), Rwanda (3,268), and Botswana (3,471). These countries have high poverty rates, large levels of corruption, and have shown trends of limited freedom. Because of some of these factors, it makes sense that they would be as low in happiness as they are.

World Happiness Score by GDP per Capita

The first variable that contributes to happiness scores is GDP per Capita. GDP per Capita is very important when ranking happiness as countries with higher GDP’s usually tend to be happier due to more resources, job opportunites, pay, etc. For reference, we can see that Luxembourg had the highest score in this category with a score of 2,209. Luxembourg was ranked the 6th happiest country within the report. Luxembourg was followed by Singapore (ranked 27th), Ireland (ranked 13th), Switzerland (ranked 4th), and United Arab Emirates (ranked 24th). All 5 of these countries had high GDP per Capita scores but also high, or higher, world happiness scores. This shows a correlation between average income per person in an economy and happiness. This is not shocking as people tend to associate happiness with money because money provides stablity, resources, and success in an economy.

The bottom 5 countries in this section were Venezula with a score of 0, Niger (570), Mozambique (578), Liberia (636), and Malawi (648). All of these countries, except for Liberia which was ranked 97, were all ranked betweem 101-138 for overall happiness. I thought that this was interesting because they have fairly normal happiness scores but their GDP per Capita scores were extremely low. This could be because of large areas of poverty, limited resources, or even the lifestyle differences these countries have compared to other countries.

World Happiness Score by Freedom to Make Decisions

The next variable that contributes to happiness scores is Freedom to Make Decisions. As we know, not all countries have the same liberties as others. This variable being measured is extremely important to have as the rights and freedoms of individuals contributes to happiness and how they are able to live. If countries don’t have a lot of freedom, it would make sense for their overall happiness scores to be lower, thus making that country have a lower rank.

The top 5 scoring countries for this category were Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland and the Netherlands. As we can see, there are 3 nordic countries included again with high rankings. The 5 lowest scoring countries were Afghanistan, Lebanon, Algeria, Chad, and Comoros. These 5 countries were all ranked between 96-147 for overall happiness. Once again, there is clear correlation between freedom and happiness. Afghanistan has a lot of laws, regulations and beliefs that limit its citizens freedoms. This would explain such low scores in this category and overall when it comes to happiness.

World Happiness Score by Generosity

The next variable measured is generosity. Generosity is defined as “willingness to give or to share.” I believe generosity is measured in this report due to the importance of what it means. If countries are filled with generous people, help each other out, take care of each other, this would contribute to happiness in a very large way.

The top 5 scoring countries for this category were Indonesia, Myanmar, Gambia, Kenya and Thailand. I thought these results were interesting as all of these countries are ranked with overall happiness scores putting them betweem 61-126th. I did some background research and found that religion could be apart of this as well as overall values of the people in these countries. Many of the people in these countries focus a lot on the word of God, morality, and treatment of peers in a positive way.

The top 5 lowest scoring countries for this category were Georgia, Japan, Botswana, Greece and Portugal. This was also shocking to me as these countries ranked betweem 54-142 for overall happiness scores. This made me began to question how much generosity actually plays into ones overall happiness.

World Happiness Score by Healthy Life Expectancy

Next was world happiness based on Health Life Expectancy. There is a debate on whether those who live longer are actually happier or if there are more negative impacts on happiness as you age. When I reached this part of the dataset, I became extremely interested to see what the data would show.

The top 5 highest scoring countries for this section were Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Switzerland. These countries all were ranked overall between 4-81 on the happiness scale. I found this interesting because all of these countries do have fairly large life expectancies. For example, Hong Kong has the highest ranked life expectency, with Japan in second, Switzerland in fourth, and Singaport in ffth. This would make sense as to why their life expectancy scores would be so high in this category as those in these countries tend to live longer.

The top 5 lowest scoring countries for this section were Lesotho, Mozambique, Eswatini, Chad and Zimbabwe. These countries were all ranked betweem 101-147 on the happiness scale. This also made more sense to me as these countries have some of the lowest life expectancies. For example, Lesotho has a life expectancy of 55.65. Zimbabwe is not far off with a life expectancy of 62.16. This shows that countries with lower life expectancies are typically not as happy as those with higer life expectancies. This could be due to a shorter time to reach peak happiness, experience life and achieve the life they believe they deserve.

World Happiness Score by Perceptions of Corruption

The next variable measured is Perceptions of Corruption. To give context, this means an individuals perceived levels of public sector corruption with corruption defined as an “abuse of entrusted power for private gain”. Countries with more corruption are more likely to have lower scores for this category as corruption can limit freedom, include violence, and overall impact the lives of those living there in a negative light.

The top 5 highest scoring countries for this category were Singapore, Rwanda, Finland, Denmark and Sweden. Once again, these countries had very high scoring levels of happiness with the exception of Rwanda which was ranked 143 overall. When looking at outside resources, these countries have fairly low levels of corruption or none at all. This does not mean there is no problems within government, but countries like Finland, Denmark and Switerzland have very strong governments that seem to offer a lot of freedom, and overall tend to be more passive.

The top 5 lowest scoring countries for this category were Croatia, Afghanistan, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Ukraine. As we know, countries like Afghanistan and Ukraine have high levels of corruption, especially right now. Croatia, Romania, and Bosnia and Herzegovina have higher levels of corruption, but not to a point that it impacted their overall happiness scores too significantly. However, it is important to note that Croatia scored 0 for this category.

World Happiness Score by Social Support

The last variable measured was Social Support. Social Support is defined as “A network of family, friends, neighbors, and community members that is available in times of need to give psychological, physical, and financial help.” This is important as support among individuals will contribute to happiness overall and the outcome of individual’s lives.

The top 5 highest scoring countries in this category were Iceland, Turkmenistan, Czechia, Finland and Slovenia. All of these countries had overall ranks between 1 and 78. They also had very high scores, all scoring over 1,000 for this category. This shows a high correlation between support and overall scores. This could be interpreted that individuals in these countries who have more support are overall happier due to the feeling of security in a wide variety of their life aspects.

The top 5 lowest scoring countries in this category were Afghanistan, Benin, Rwanda, Morocco and Malawi. All 5 of these countries were bwteem 100 and 146 for thier overall rank. Not having social support clearly has impacted their happiness and impacted their rank significantly. These countries all had scores between 0 and 279 for this category which is extremely low. However, for a country like Afghanistan, it is not shocking due to their limited amounts of freedom and large amounts of corruption.

Conclusion

Overall, this data prvided interesting insight into the happiness of countries around the world. It is clear that social support, freedom, and perceptions of corruption all had major impacts on countries overall rankings. I think it is important to note that there was some variablity when it came to countries with lower rankings that had higher scores in certain categories. For example, Turkmenistan which was ranked 78 got a high rating for social support and freedom to make decisions. Myanmar which was ranked 126 was in the top 5 for geneorsity, etc.

What this data provides is a strong look into the happiness of countries since the pandemic. My hypothesis was that most countries will have high happiness scores due to the pandemic decreasing over the past year and that support scores for countries will be high as well. I believe this data provided me with information that proved this hypothesis to be true. In order to continue studying this information, it could be useful to look at the other reports from a year or two before the pandemic to now. I also think that with the Omnicorn Varient still present in our world, it could be useful to collect more data over the next 2-3 years.

Overall, I do think that happiness has improved this year. As we have moved out of lockdowns and social isolation, it seems that people are getting more and more back to normal life on a daily basis. This data provided insight into 6 variables that contributed to happiness and was able to demonstrate a deeper look into countries overall scores. I believe that as we continue to move forward from a few really terrible years in a pandemic, it is a fair assumption to think that happiness scores will continue to increase.