Are you happy? Are you happier now than before? Or are you happier than others you know?

These straightforward questions might not have an honest answer. I tried to respond to these questions for myself, but with limited success. I am happy. However, I am not sure if I am happier now than before, or more than others.

While I struggle to answer these questions even for myself, researchers in Rome have released the fourth World Happiness Report that gauges happiness across the globe with an extensive survey of thousands of happy and unhappy people.

Also read: Pakistanis continue to be happier than Indians: UN report

The Report coincides with the UN World Happiness Day on March 20. Pakistan is 92 on the list of 156 countries; more joyous than Iran (105) and India (118), but lagging behind Saudi Arabia (34).

Who knew crude and bitumen could lead to happiness.

The idea behind the ‘happiness project’ is rather simple. The traditional measures of economic well-being, such as GDP and life expectancy at birth, are limited in determining the breadth of human accomplishments.

Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Jean-Paul Fitousi made the same point in Mismeasuring our Lives: Why GDP Doesn’t Add Up.

The authors of the happiness report hold similar views. They believe that,

Happiness provides a better indicator of human welfare than do income, poverty, education, health and good government measured separately.
In the current report, they have included inequality of happiness as an additional measure and found that those who live in places where happiness is equitably spread are happier than the rest.