March 20th is a big day in my world. It is the International Day of Happiness, which my workplace uses to message the importance of enhancing well-being in the autism community. It is also the day that the World Happiness Report (Heliwell et al., 2024) is released each year. The World Happiness Report is a publication released annually by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a global initiative for the United Nations. It ranks countries based on various factors related to happiness and well-being. It has been published annually since 2012.
Typically, the media highlights which country is the happiest—indeed, that is exciting data. This year, the Scandinavian countries are leading the world in happiness again, which has been true since the report's inception; Finland topped the list as the happiest country for the 7th consecutive year. This year, the report provided additional information about people's happiness at different life stages or age ranges, the first time the report had been organized in this manner. The report provides rankings by age group. Interestingly, a particular age group in one country can vary widely from their overall rankings. For example, Lithuania topped the list for children and young people under 30 but placed 52nd in the overall rankings.
These age group data and national rankings are all interesting, but what I look for each year is the representation of people with disabilities within the World Happiness Report. The World Health Organization (2023) estimates that 16 percent of the world's population, approximately 1.6 billion people, is disabled. I quickly searched the report, and disability is mentioned just once. This single mention is in reference to gender, noting that although women outlive men, women have lower levels of mental and physical health and a greater burden of later life sickness and disability, possibly lowering their satisfaction with life.
People with disabilities are often marginalized (McConkey et al., 2021; Valle & Connor, 2019). Disability research doesn’t regularly consider happiness when assessing people with disabilities. Research and intervention efforts for individuals with autism and other disabilities have focused primarily on remediating perceived deficits (Fine, 2019). Some research has reported that people with disabilities report lower rates of happiness, including those living in low- and middle-income countries (Emerson & Llewellyn, 2023), while others document people with disabilities thriving and flourishing (Thompson et al., 2020; Sen Mukherjee & Barr, 2023). There is a reasonable argument that disability does not create unhappiness; rather, it's the lack of access to critical quality-of-life factors such as opportunities to meet others and create strong relationships, transportation, employment, and the ability to access one's community fully. These barriers can and should be addressed by society before assuming that disability contributes to unhappiness.
The World Happiness Report has taken on an enormous task in evaluating well-being worldwide. The researcher’s efforts are commendable. This year's breakdown related to age will provide meaningful information to researchers and policymakers. Lithuanians will most likely ask themselves, “What happens to our happy children—how can we do better to maintain a happy population?” In the United States, we will be asking ourselves about changes we simply must take to address the low level of happiness for our young people (under age 30).
But I can’t help but want to have a greater understanding of the happiness of the 16 percent of the world's population that identifies as disabled. The magnitude of this research and its ability to influence world populations—I can only imagine what it could do to affect change for people with disabilities.
References
Emerson, E., & Llewellyn, G. (2023). The wellbeing of women and men with and without disabilities: evidence from cross-sectional national surveys in 27 low- and middle-income countries. Quality of Life Research, 32(2), 357–371.
Fine, M. (2019). Critical Disability Studies: Looking Back and Forward. Journal of Social Issues, 75(3), 972–984.
Helliwell, J. F., Layard, R., Sachs, J. D., De Neve, J.E., Aknin, L. B., & Wang, S. (Eds.). (2024). World Happiness Report 2024.
McConkey, R., Slater, P., Smith, A., Dubois, L., & Shellard, A. (2021). Perceptions of the rights and capabilities of people with intellectual disability in the United States. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 34(2), 537–545.
Sen Mukherjee, A., & Barr, M. (2023). “A blessing and a burden”: Exploring posttraumatic growth in doctors with acquired invisible disability—An interpretative phenomenological analysis. British Journal of Health Psychology, 28(2), 586–603.
Thompson, T., Talapatra, D., Hazel, C. E., Coleman, J., & Cutforth, N. (2020). Thriving with Down syndrome: A qualitative multiple case study. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 33(6), 1390–1404.
Valle, J. & Connor, D. (2019). Rethinking Disability: A Disability Studies Approach to Inclusive Practices 2nd Edition. Routledge Press. Milton, Oxfordshire
World Health Organization (2023, March 7) Disability.
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