Full Report: Visualizing The World Happiness Reports by Region
What is happiness to you?
The member states of the United Nations, through its Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) launched in 2012, has begun the process of quantifying happiness in each country around the world, in an effort to collect information that will help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 21st Century. This process is known as The World Happiness Report, and a new report is scheduled to arrive every year for the foreseeable future.
To the United Nations, quantifying happiness involves measuring and aggregating 6 explanatory factors. The aggregate of these factors is known as the "Happiness Score". The 6 explanatory factors that the UN has agreed upon are:
- GDP per capita
- Social support
- Healthy life expectancy
- Freedom to make life choices
- Generosity
- Perception of curruption.
The UN has chosen these factors because the most current research has shown that these 6 factors most accurately explain national-level differences in life evaluations. The 6 factors are not meant to be interpreted as specific causal agents, but rather to be understood as proven correlates to the happiness and well-being of a nation. They are seen as trusted metrics in the emerging science of happiness and well-being. (The 2019 World Happiness Report FAQ)
Goal:
I would like to know how Happiness has changed in each region of the world since the beginning of the UN's publishing of The World Happiness Report. To achieve this goal, I would like to make use of every World Happiness Report that has been published since the report's inception, 2012. However, since the UN has not made public the datasets that were used in 2012 and 2013, and it did not publish a report in 2014, the 6 most recent World Happiness Reports will have to suffice.
Research Question:
How has Happiness changed in each region of the world since 2015, the year that the UN began publicizing its World Happiness Reports' raw datasets?
To answer this question, I will analyze the 6 most recent World Happiness Reports.
To answer this question, I will analyze the 6 most recent World Happiness Reports: