PowerNAP by Sophia Kissin
I recently completed PODUW’s New Analyst Project (PowerNAP) titled, “What makes us happy,” through which I analyzed data relating to the average happiness score and various societal factor scores among 149 countries in the world. Looking at the countries grouped by 10 global regions, the highest Happiness Score, of 7.129 from the North America and ANZ Region, was almost double that of the lowest Happiness Score of 4.442 from South Asia. This sharp contrast between regions suggests that some factor must be at play. The happiness scores of regions from Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa filled the middle of this range.
Additionally, looking at the countries with the highest Happiness Scores yielded 9 countries from Western Europe and 1 country from North America/ANZ. This is unsurprising, given the previous results of Western Europe having the highest average Happiness Score among other regions.
To better understand the factors that influence a country’s Happiness Score, I analyzed the Correlation between the Happiness Score of all countries versus 6 different attributes. First, there is a consistent pattern when a country’s Happiness score is individually correlated against Logged GDP per capita, Social Support, and Healthy Life Expectancy, and the Freedom to Make Life Choices; a higher attribute score is heavily connected to a higher Happiness Score. This strongly suggests that people who live in countries with a longer life expectancy, more support from the people around them, and in a wealthier country positively impact the average Happiness Score of that country.
Interestingly, the correlation between the Happiness Score and generosity had a much less distinct pattern, where both higher and lower happiness scores were related to both negative and positive generosity scores. Countries with lower perceptions of corruption were associated with higher Happiness scores, and vice versa. This is reasonable, as the absence of stress about one’s home government being compromised leaves more room for happiness.
It was fascinating to dive into the Happiness Scores of countries in the world, along with their correlations to various socio-economic factors.
