uber-blog mentions news about Nigerians being the happiest people in the world. (Some Nigerian intellectuals would beg to differ.) Writing in the October 4, 2003 New Scientist (not available online?) about research concerning The pursuit of happiness, Michael Bond writes:

While it is tempting to hold up those nations and populations that report the highest levels of happiness or life satisfaction as a model for others to follow, even those optimistic about the science think this unwise. "Interpreting the data can be a great problem," admits Veenhoven. The word "happiness" has no precise equivalent in some languages. Even in English it means different things to different people -- Veenhoven has recorded 15 separate academic definitions.

Is it 快乐 or 高兴?

Another complication is that satisfaction is not quite the same thing as happiness....

知足常乐

Another result from the surveys that conceals layers of intriguing complexity concerns wealth. Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea report lower levels of subjective well-being than their incomes would predict, and the US and certain other western nations higher. So westerners are happier than Asians? Not necessarily.

Different cultures value happiness in very different ways. In individualistic western countries, it is often seen as a reflection of personal achievement. Being unhappy implies that you have not made the most of your life. Latin American countries, which also report high happiness levels, have a similarly high regard for those with an upbeat attitude. Eunkook Mark Suh at Yonsei University in Seoul thinks this pressure to be happy could lead people to over-report how happy they feel.

Meanwhile in the more collectivist nations such as Japan, China and South Korea, people have a more fatalistic attitude towards happiness. "They believe it is very much a blessing from heavenly sources," says Suh. "One of the consequences of such an attitude is that you don't have to feel inferior or guilty about not being very happy, since happiness does not reflect your ability." Indeed, in Asian cultures the pursuit of happiness is often frowned on -- which in turn could lead people to under-report how happy they feel.

命中注定

What's more, the things that give people happiness, satisfaction and meaning in their lives vary considerably between cultures. Shinobu Kitayama at Kyoto University in Japan and Hazel Rose Markus at Stanford University, California, believe that how satisfied a person is with their life depends largely on how successfully they adhere to their particular cultural "standard".

In the US, satisfaction comes from personal success, self-expression, pride, a high sense of self-esteem and a distinct sense of self. In Japan, on the other hand, it comes from fulfilling the expectations of your family, meeting your social responsibilities, self-discipline, cooperation and friendliness. So while in the US it is perfectly appropriate to pursue your own happiness, in Japan you are more likely to find happiness by not directly pursuing it.

And there's another twist. The happiest nations -- mostly western and individualistic ones -- also tend to have the highest levels of suicide. "There are some real downsides to individualistic cultures," says Ed Diener at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "People with mental illness are in real trouble with no extended family to watch over them."

...

Survey after survey has shown that the desire for material goods, which has increased hand in hand with average income, is a "happiness suppressant".

One study, by Tim Kasser at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, found that young adults who focus on money, image and fame tend to be more depressed, have less enthusiasm for life and suffer more physical symptoms such as headaches and sore throats than others (The High Price of Materialism, MIT Press, 2002). Kasser believes that people tend to embrace material values when they are feeling insecure (retail therapy, anyone?). "Advertisements have become more sophisticated," says Kasser. "They try to tie their message to people's psychological needs. But it is a false link. It is toxic."

Kasser, who has not owned a television since 1992, wants governments to categorise advertising as a form of pollution and either tax it or force advertisers to print warning messages about how materialism can damage your health. His point is that since nothing about materialism can help you find happiness, governments should discourage it and instead promote things that can. For instance, they could support businesses that allow their employees plenty of time off to be with their families, and that practise equality through profit-sharing.

Idealistic? Of course. Yet these days even hard-headed economists tend to agree that the key to making people happier is to shift from pure economic growth -- which fuels a consumerist culture that is antithetical to happiness -- to personal growth. By this reckoning, a government's priorities should be to reduce unemployment and job insecurity, improve mental healthcare, encourage direct democracy (studies in Switzerland, where referendums are common, suggest people are happier the more they feel in control of their lives), and -- perhaps most controversially -- discourage the pursuit of status.

This last is crucial, believes Richard Layard, co-director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, since the pursuit of social status is "truly fruitless" at the level of society. So, out go devices such as performance-related pay and league tables when they are deliberately made public in order to motivate people through the quest for rank. "This condemns as many to fail as to succeed -- not a good formula for raising human happiness," says Layard.

...

Carol Graham at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC warns that countries trying to deepen democratic reforms need to concentrate on keeping their "middle-earners" happy and secure. In a study in Peru, Graham found that this group, whose support no government in a developing country can do without, are far less satisfied than the poor, for they take as their reference point the very wealthy, whose income and status they will be hard-pushed to match. The poor, meanwhile, take as their reference point the middle-earners, who are more within their reach. Once again, what counts is not what you have so much as what others have.

So, for true happiness, poverty is still the answer.