Is India's unhappiness exaggerated?

While India’s abysmally low rank of 133 in terms of a measure of happiness during 2015-17 in a sample of 156 countries in the World Happiness Report (WHR) 2018 is stunning, it would be naive, if not mistaken, to take the rankings at face value. 

Happiness is measured using subjective perceptions of well-being. Specifically, it is based on answers to the Cantril ladder question asking respondents to value their lives today on a 0 to 10 scale, with the worst possible life as a 0 and the best possible life as a 10. The distribution of the national average evaluations is then used to rank countries. Another notable feature is the analysis of inter-country variation in happiness scores in terms of GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy at birth, social support, freedom to make life choices, generosity, perceptions of corruption, and positive and negative emotions experienced the previous day. 

Overall, these factors taken together explain three-quarters of the inter-country variation in happiness scores. There are positive associations between happiness and GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy at birth, freedom to make life choices, perceptions of corruption and positive emotion. 

The objective of the present study is to examine whether India’s abysmal rank (133 in a sample of 156 countries) is justified or whether India’s unhappiness is exaggerated. An issue with the analysis of happiness in WHR 2018 is that the role of GDP per capita or income is overemphasised, as reflected in the top 10 happiest countries which are also among the richest (for instance, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland). We re-examine this and recalculate India’s rank in a global context, based on data furnished by WHR 2018. An important refinement of our analysis is to use both GDP per capita and its square. On the presumption that there is a positive association between happiness and GDP per capita and negative association between the former and square of happiness, it is expected that the overall association between happiness and GDP would be weaker. Moreover, it is likely to sharpen the distinctness between happiness and GDP. 

Our analysis points to significant changes in happiness scores and consequently country rankings. 

Happiness rises with GDP per capita but at a diminishing rate. So the overall association of income with happiness is slightly positive. This suggests that happiness is more than economic well-being. Happiness also rises with healthy life expectancy but at a slow rate. A similar result is obtained for social support. The higher the social support, the greater is happiness. This is not surprising as social networks address many health and emotional problems of the aged, lonely, disabled and those abused by the family. They also yield positive externalities in transmitting healthy behaviour, innovations, and awareness. Freedom to make life choices is positively associated with happiness. It is, however, important that both individually and in combination, healthy life expectancy, social support and freedom to make choices are associated with substantially larger increases in happiness than GDP per capita. By Implication, happiness is largely distinct from income. 

No less important is the finding that with different happiness scores the rankings change somewhat dramatically. The happiest country in WHR 2018 is Finland but in ours it is Singapore. More pertinent are changes in South Asia. Bhutan remains the happiest country in WHR 2018 and our analysis, with a substantially lower global rank (implying greater happiness). Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka also have considerably lower ranks than India in both WHR 2018 and our analysis. Importantly, each of these countries becomes happier in our analysis compared with WHR 2018. India also becomes considerably happier as its global rank falls from 133 in WHR 2018 to 106 in ours. Both Afghanistan and Pakistan rank higher than India. 

So the important point is that, if the role of income is not overemphasised, India’s happiness is much greater than predicted by WHR 2018. In other words, the latter exaggerates India’s unhappiness.

The measurement of happiness is an improvement on basing the well-being of a country on its GDP per capita in so far as the former goes beyond economic well-being. Even though happiness is measured in terms of individual life evaluation, it has the merit of being all inclusive. However, the explanation of variation in happiness is flawed because of the large overlap between happiness and income. 

From a policy perspective, while the role of economic growth can’t be entirely overlooked, we mustn’t be tempted to overemphasise it in achieving a broader measure of human well-being such as happiness. What is perhaps more important is that, both individually and in combination, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom of choice matter much more than economic growth. The case therefore of expanding human capabilities through better education, health, social support and freedom of choice is compelling. 

Yadav, is research affiliate, population, health and nutrition research programme, Institute for Human Development, Delhi; Kulkarni is lecturer, department of sociology, University of Pennsylvania, USA; and Gaiha is (Hon.) professorial research fellow, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, England