Source: Yascha Mounk
by Yascha Mounk
“News reports about the World Happiness Report usually give the impression that it is based on a major research effort. Noting that the report is ‘compiled annually by a consortium of groups including the United Nations and Gallup,’ for example, an article about last year’s iteration in the New York Times warned darkly that ‘the United States fell out of the Top 20’ without a hint of skepticism about the reliability of such a finding. In light of such confident pronouncements, and the absence of any critical voices in most of these news stories, you might be forgiven for thinking that the report carefully assesses how happy each country in the world is according to a sophisticated methodology, one that likely involves both subjective and objective criteria. But upon closer examination …” (03/20/25)
https://yaschamounk.substack.com/p/the-world-happiness-report-is-a-sham