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Comment by layman51 | Hacker News Reader

This year it looks like Germany is higher on the scale. I am surprised by Mexico being really high.

It's mostly people just rating their own lives, which leaves it open to people in different cultures reporting the same actual happiness differently. In some cultures, saying you're happy is bragging, so people understate. In others, rating it low is complaining, so people report overly happy.

I see World Happiness Report as primarily a measure of what's considered the most socially acceptable way to discuss happiness across cultures. In the USA, people often brag about how miserable they are, for example.

It's not all about finance. From my recent visits to Mexico everyone there seems much happier and friendlier than in the US and Europe. It was honestly quite striking. I have no theory what causes this (maybe large families?), but it was really quite obvious.

I have an unsubstantiated theory that people in Latin America largely realize their institutions are completely broken or ineffectual, thus they and their local community are on their own in life. Thus it is pointless to be angry about a lot of things people in other places are angry about (corruption, government, immigrants, prices, corporations, etc) because it's a total lost cause, it's not like they could vote it away even if they tried. The end result is their sphere of worries basically are constrained to their immediate family, work, and community all of which are things they not only have control over but actually probably will care about them.

Mexico is finally shedding their neoliberal order and getting stuff built and people taken care of (instead of foreign investors). President Sheinbaum has like an 80% approval rating.

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