national happiness – Mental Flowers

Turns out Americans aren’t so happy right now; we didn’t even make it into the top ten. In fact, eight of the top ten happiest nations are in Europe.

There is more to happiness than raw economic growth. What happens when you measure countries by employment, health care, and life satisfaction? The United States and Europe run in opposite directions.

#1: Denmark

Employment Score: 5th
Self-Reported Health:15th
Employees Working Long Hours: 3rd
Disposable Income:18th
Educational Attainment: 18th
Life Expectancy: 25th

I was surprised to see that Danes worked some of the longest hours of all the nations polled. They also didn’t score super high on life expectancy or disposable income.

#2, Canada, had a seemingly more balanced ranking, ranking tenth in long hours worked and 2nd for self-reported health. Norway at #3 also had pretty good scores all around.

Hmm, maybe it’s the cold weather?

Check out the whole list at The Happiest Countries in the World – Bruce Stokes – Business – The Atlantic.

The Happiest Countries In The World (247wallst.com)
And The Happiest Place on Earth Is . . . (jonathanturley.org)
US doesn’t make cut for happiest nations list (msnbc.msn.com)

Well, I was having a good day…but enough about me, what’s going on in with the rest of the world? Pretty miserable stuff, actually: Libyan rebels, Japan’s earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown, the government shut down barely avoided…well, how are individual states doing? Now we know! A map on alexdavies.net used Twitter to determine just how happy each of our fifty nifty states are. Illinois seems darned happy. Washingtonians are – apparently only kinda sorta happy. From the Seattle PI:

On a scale of one to 42 — where one is ecstatically mirthful — Washington state has a happiness index of 21. In other words, it could go either way.

A map from alexdavies.net uses Twitter keywords to pinpoint just how positive or negative states are.

So, if lots of people are using words like “love” and “amazing” when they tweet, their states might get a better ranking.

Oddly enough, sad words for Washington include “Phillies” and “presale,” according to the site. “Starcraft” and “gentleman” also show up as negative words.