We recently applied the scale in Denmark and compared the national mental well-being estimates of Danish people with people living in Iceland, Catalonia, and England. We found that people in Catalonia scored considerably higher on mental well-being than people in all three northern European countries—challenging the prevailing idea that places in northern Europe are typically happier than those in southern Europe.
In the World Happiness Reports, which tend to show the Nordic countries as leading, happiness is measured using Cantril’s ladder of life evaluation. This asks people to rate how they currently view their life on a ladder scale in which zero is the “worst possible life for you” and 10 is the “best possible life for you.” But such measures are strongly influenced by economic conditions and are poor proxies for mental health and well-being. [...]
In other words, high income may buy better life evaluations, but this is not the same as positive mental health and well-being. A recent report also showed that inequalities in life evaluation appear to be rising in several places in Scandinavia, and that a considerable amount of people in the Nordic countries appear to be struggling, contrary to what these countries are famous for.
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