How Do You Measure Happiness?

For the seventh year in a row, Finland won the distinction of being the world’s happiest country, according to the World Happiness Report 2024.

“While Scandinavian countries as usual occupied the top spots, both America and Germany fell out of the top 20. War- and revolution-racked Afghanistan held the bottom spot in the ranking of 143 countries, with a score of only 1.7 compared with Finland’s 7.7 and Denmark’s 7.6” (“The Secret Behind the World’s Happiest Country,” The Economist, April 4, 2024).

What is Finland’s secret? After listing trust in national institutions and fellow Finns, low corruption, excellent education and other factors, The Economist suggested (perhaps facetiously) that the real reason could be saunas.

“Some argue that the real reason is that the Finns sweat out their negative thoughts. Finland has roughly 3.5 [million] saunas, more than one per two Finns.”

Seriously, though, how do you really measure happiness? How does the World Happiness Report measure it?

The World Happiness Report surveys life evaluations

The World Happiness Report rankings are based on the answers to a simple question. Gallup World Poll respondents are asked to rank their life on a scale of 0 to 10.

Our Creator tells us that following His way of life will result in eternal happiness. It doesn’t matter where we live or even what is going on around us. People are asked “to think of a ladder, with the best possible life for them being a 10 and the worst possible life being a 0. They are then asked to rate their own current lives on that 0 to 10 scale” (worldhappiness.report).

The 158-page report goes into great detail comparing other factors that may contribute to these feelings, but these life evaluations, averaged over three years, are the source of the rankings.

The six measures that the report uses to help explain the differences in reported happiness are:

• GDP per capita.
• Healthy life expectancy.
• Having someone to count on.
• Freedom to make life choices.
• Generosity.
• Freedom from corruption.

The report also looks at survey results about positive and negative emotions. The positives looked at are laughter, enjoyment and doing interesting things. The negatives are worry, sadness and anger.

Certainly, all of these factors can influence our life evaluations. But they are not the only ways that have been proposed to measure happiness.

Happiness: A History

People have looked at happiness in different ways over the millennia.

Happiness: A History, by Darrin M. McMahon, shows that in many cultures, happiness was considered just the result of luck or fate—a rare blessing, not something everyone could pursue.

During the Enlightenment, people began to express the belief that everyone could be happy. Some great thinkers tried to make happiness into a mathematical formula to find ways to maximize pleasure for the greatest number of people while minimizing the pain.

For example, University of Glasgow professor Francis Hutcheson wrote in 1725, “That action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers, and that worst which, in like manner, occasions misery” (p. 213).

He even tried to distill happiness into algebraic formulas such as:

M = (B + S) x A = BA + SA; and therefore BA = M – SA = M – I, and B = (M – I) / A

Where B = benevolence, A = ability, S = self-love, I = interest, and M = moment of good.

Needless to say, such measures of happiness are actually ill-defined and never caught on.

Thankfully, you don’t have to move to Finland or solve complicated formulas to find happiness. The best place to look is in the guidebook provided by the One who designed us and wants the best for us.

How does God measure happiness?

Our Creator tells us that following His way of life will result in eternal happiness. It doesn’t matter where we live or even what is going on around us. God’s way works from the inside out, and transcends our current circumstances.

Biblical happiness is a multifaceted concept expressed through various words that together add up to the ultimate answer to all of our hopes and desires.

Consider this sampling of what our loving God wants for us:

• “Happy is the man who finds wisdom” (Proverbs 3:13, emphasis added throughout).
• “Happy is he who keeps the law” (Proverbs 29:18).
• “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him!” (Psalm 34:8).
• “Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who delights greatly in His commandments” (Psalm 112:1; see “What Does the Fear of the Lord Mean?”).
• “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3; see “Beatitudes: Keys to Real Happiness”).
• “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered” (Romans 4:7).
• “Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city” (Revelation 22:14).
• “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You” (Isaiah 26:3).
• “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).
• “For He satisfies the longing soul, and fills the hungry soul with goodness” (Psalm 107:9).
• “For God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy to a man who is good in His sight” (Ecclesiastes 2:26).
• “His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord’” (Matthew 25:21).
• “You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

Fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore! No matter how you measure it, it doesn’t get any better than that.

If this brief survey has whetted your appetite, study this subject further in our article “What Is Happiness?”