FACTS AND FIGURES

• Researchers investigating happiness have found the following factors enhance a person’s wellbeing: happy intimate relationship with a partner; network of close friends; enjoyable and fulfilling career; enough money; regular exercise; nutritional diet; sufficient sleep; spiritual or religious beliefs; fun hobbies and leisure pursuits; healthy self-esteem; optimistic outlook; realistic and achievable goals; sense of purpose and meaning; a sense of belonging; the ability to adapt to change; living in a fair and democratic society.

• There is no established long-term time series of life satisfaction (or happiness) in Australia, although findings from various surveys conducted since the 1950s produced results within a fairly narrow range, that is average life satisfaction of around 6.5 to 7.5 on a scale of one to ten, indicating general satisfaction with their lives. This is despite the many changes in the social, economic and environmental conditions of Australians’ lives during these decades. Surveys in other Western countries have produced similar results.

• Overall life satisfaction scores collected from 90 countries in the 1990s ranged from 3.2 to 8.0 on a scale of one to 10. Australia’s average score of 7.3 was among the highest scores, comparing favourably among countries with high levels of per capita income. Countries such as the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the USA all had very similar levels of life satisfaction to Australia.

• In August 2006, Ipsos Mackay conducted a national telephone survey of 1000 people for the Australia Institute ... only 6% of people choose ‘money and financial situation’ as the most important contributor to their happiness. Instead, 59% choose ‘partner/spouse and family relationships’ as the most important thing, with a further 18% selecting ‘health’, and another 8% selecting ‘community and friends’.

• Despite very favourable economic conditions for over a decade, with high incomes and low employment, four in ten Australians think that overall quality of life in Australia is getting worse, with almost half of these saying it is getting a lot worse. Only 25% say it is getting better, and 34% say it is about the same.

• A study using data from around 80 countries has found happiness is greatest in youth and old age with depression being most common among men and women in their forties.

• Over 50 years Western societies have got richer. But happiness, as measured in surveys, has not increased. Americans were no more likely to describe themselves as happy in the 1990s than in the 1940s. And even the Japanese, who went from near-poverty in the 1950s to affluence in the 1980s, did not become happier.

• The World Database of Happiness, which measured 91 nations between 1995 and 2005, puts Australia fourth on the ladder along with Finland, Mexico and Sweden. Tanzanians are the least happy.

• In the emerging field of neuroplasticity, scientists can evaluate a subject’s temperament by measuring the relationship between the left and right pre-frontal cortex of the brain. Happier people will have greater activity in the left pre-frontal cortex, while those prone to negative emotions will experience higher activity in the right pre-frontal cortex.

• About 15% of the population is generally optimistic or flourishing; 10% is especially pessimistic, known as languishing. 20% have a frank mental disorder and everyone else is in the middle. There is a strong genetic indication on whether people are in the flourishing or languishing group, but meditation and other techniques can move people from the right pre-frontal cortex to the left pre-frontal cortex.

• The tension between individual pleasure and the common good is at the heart of many current debates about happiness. Of course we want to be happy. But what pleases me may not please you.

• In 2002 an American study found a strong correlation between gratitude and overall levels of happiness. The concept of gratitude implies a measure of restraint, of contained rather than infinite desires.

• The study of wellbeing is a complex field of research. There are at times discrepancies between studies. For instance, some studies claim that education, age, sex and ethnicity have no correlation to reported wellbeing, whereas other studies indicate that women report higher levels of wellbeing than men, and that those with more education report higher wellbeing than those with less education. Care therefore needs to be taken when interpreting individual pieces of research.

• In 2006, Australia ranked third out of 177 countries on the Human Development Index, after Norway and Iceland. The Human Development Report is commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme as a comparative measure of 3 key indices: (1) life expectancy at birth; (2) adult literacy; school and university enrolment; and (3) GDP per capita. Although Australia ranks high on the Human Development Index, Australia performs poorly in a rang of happiness indicators according to the International Social Survey Programme, a survey of about 50,000 adults in 35 nations in 2002, e.g. Australians rank close to the bottom of an international ranking of job satisfaction levels.

• In 2001, the World Values Survey conducted a study of more than 65 countries, suggesting that the world’s happiest people live in Nigeria, followed by Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador and Puerto Rico with the least happiest in Romania, Russia and Armenia. Australia ranked 20th according to this survey. These findings contradict other studies, which suggest richer nations are happier than poor nations, e.g. the first world map of happiness lists Denmark, Switzerland and Austria as the happiest nations, with Australia ranking 26th.