World Happiness Report Reflects ‘Surprising Resilience’

How generosity and kindness help us through the pandemic

Although COVID-19 is wrenchingly awful, the pandemic has brought out the best in many of us.

That’s according to the newly released World Happiness Report, which showed “surprising resilience” in how people rated their lives.

“We asked two kinds of questions. One is about the life in general, life evaluation, we call it. How is your life going? The other is about mood, emotions, stress, anxiety,” said Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs, one of the report’s co-authors.

“Of course, we’re still in the middle of a deep crisis,” Sachs told the Associated Press. “But the responses about long-term life evaluation did not change decisively, though the disruption in our lives was so profound.”

One possible explanation: People viewed the pandemic as a common threat affecting everyone, generating “a greater sense of solidarity and fellow-feeling,” said University of British Columbia Professor Emeritus John Helliwell, another co-author.

The growth in goodwill prompted many individual acts of generosity and kindness.

“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,” the report’s authors wrote.

How countries ranked

Now in its ninth year, the annual report was produced by the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network and ranked 149 countries.

Finland ranked №1 for the fourth year in a row, followed by Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, and the Netherlands. See a list of the top 20 countries here.

The five lowest-ranking countries are Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Botswana, and Lesotho.

This year’s report looked specifically at the relationship between wellbeing and Covid-19 and found only modest changes in overall happiness rankings.

“Surprisingly, there was not, on average, a decline in wellbeing when measured by people’s own evaluation of their lives,” Helliwell told NBC News.

That means “many have adapted to their new situations in ways that might have roughly evened out their wellbeing,” reports the Washington Post.

“One of the quotes we use is ‘You aren’t traveling the world, but you’re more likely to have met your neighbors this year,’ ” Helliwell told the paper.

At least 3,000 data points are compiled for each country, and residents are surveyed about their satisfaction with their lives, according to the online magazine Inverse.

Through a complex statistical analysis, researchers assess what comprises personal happiness. The answer is found in a combination of six factors: social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, freedom from corruption, and wealth, as measured by gross domestic product per capita.

This year, it seems a shift appeared in the importance of some factors, according to Greater Good Magazine from UC Berkeley. Income became less important while being generous became more important.

Why kindness counts

“Trust and having a sense of community and kindness, really does matter,” said Richard Layard, a professor at London’s Centre for Economic Performance and co-author of the report. “They are the things that make us happy.”

His perspective is supported by earlier research on kindness and wellbeing.

“Prosocial behavior — altruism, cooperation, trust, and compassion — are all necessary ingredients of a harmonious and well-functioning society,” said Bryant P.H. Hui, Ph.D., a research assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong.

Hui, along with his colleagues, last year did a meta-analysis of 201 independent studies looking at the connection between prosocial behavior and wellbeing.

They found that everyday acts of kindness — such as helping an older neighbor carry groceries — were more strongly associated with overall wellbeing than organized activities, such as scheduled shifts at a nonprofit.

That may be because informal helping is more casual and spontaneous and can more easily lead to creating connections, Hui said. Informal giving is also more varied and less likely to grow stale or monotonous, he told Science Daily.

Although researchers found “a modest connection” to improved physical and mental health, there is a more substantive association with societal changes that can have a cumulative effect over time.

“Prosocial behavior, in any way, should be a universal value that’s practiced as much as possible, especially right now with COVID-19 and other struggles happening in the world,” Hui told Very Well Mind. “These behaviors are part of the shared culture of humankind. They bring us together, and they increase well-being not just for ourselves, but for everyone.”

Vanessa King, head of psychology at London’s Action for Happiness, said the pandemic has “made us take mental health and happiness more seriously.”

“When we are struggling, sometimes the very act of doing one small thing can help us shift our mood,” she said. “By learning what happiness is and taking simple daily actions to be happier, we can regain a sense of agency in our lives. We call this active coping.”