Israel at number five? Go figure?
I guess some people around there die happy, believing it is for a good cause, so there's no contradiction, at least not from their point of view.
I'd still rather take Norway or New Zealand.
Guess if that's what the evidence says...
I am very surprised though that people in what is nearly a perpetual war, being attacked or hated from all sides, are both subjectively happier and objectively longer living than most of the rest of the planet.
Either I have really no clue what happiness is, or we are wrong about the idea that war is bad, at least not in all cases.
There's correlation between being in relationship and reporting happiness. This can be taken as a proof that being in a relationship makes people happy ("marriage brings happiness" hypothesis). An alternative explanation does a U-turn on this one: people who are "naturally happy" are always smiling, take life easy, and basically make for a better partner. They are easier to marry, and easier to stay with once married. This is "happiness brings marriage" hypothesis. The third explanation would be that these are occurring simultaneously but are not in any causal relationship whatsoever.
Moreover, even people in Finland are more happy on average, this doesn't promise that you would be happier if you move to Finland. Rather, being in a new country with no knowledge of the language and no friends might make you less happy than you are now.
In other words, you shouldn't take this study in any particular direction of "if you want to be happy you should marry someone", nor "you should move to Finland", nor "you should join a religion."
So I can remain on my original strategy, despite all the precise corrections I received to my ill-conceived notions? Nice.
To put that into perspective, imagine a Christian country with 40% of non-believers and 60% of monks (with the monks consistently reporting high levels of happiness). That would strongly remind of Israel. (To be clear, both Jewish and Muslim population is included in the latter.)
Majority is secular. Of the religious people the majority are relatively tame. There are some extremist religious people e.g. Hasidim but they are a cult of their own (think Amish). They probably wouldn't even take part in a survey.
The reason for happiness is multi-fold:
* It's a 3 year average. Notice that Israel is actually slipping due to last year.
* Economy was generally good until last October
* Army service tends to unify the community
* It's a small country which tends to bring people together through collective fate
I'm not saying that the religious people aren't happier than the median. But I am saying that based on statistics Israel is relatively secular. More so than most western countries.
Regardless, this is a self reporting study which is the only way to report happiness. Over the past 3 years prior to October Israel had years of peace which are far more appreciated in a country that has known quite a lot of conflict. I think westerners don't appreciate this as much as we do.
As the people return from the army feeling they have done something significant to protect their country, and with the public discourse drifting away from the regular "Bibi vs. not Bibi" agenda, I fully expect Israel to report even higher levels of happiness next year.
80% are pretty much interested in Bibi taking a hike by now. The only people who still want him have a deep agenda and never liked him to begin with. He's outlived his usefulness even for them.
As a non religious person I love Yom Kippur. It's super fun. We all go out with bikes and have a blast. We respect the religious people and don't drive (also it's dangerous with all the kids out on bikes). It doesn't mean we're religious.
I accept that most feel they have a Jewish identity. But that isn't religion, it's tradition.
They did actually drop a pretty significant 0.9 points in the latest poll, but since the list is using three year averages that only caused a 0.3 drop for 2023.