Did you see the recent World Happiness Report?

First, a brief background. The World Happiness Report started in 2012 and is a partnership of Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and the WHR’s Editorial Board. The purpose is to increase attention on well-being and to help guide governmental policies by evaluating the state of happiness in the world today. They get their rankings by looking at data from the Gallup World Poll where about 1,000 participants from each country respond to questions about their life satisfaction from the years 2021-2023. The report is based on a 3-year average (World Happiness Report, 2024).

In 2023, the US ranked 15th but it dropped to 23rd this year. The reason? People under the age of 30.

People under 30 ranked 62nd out of 143 countries, while people over the age of 60 ranked 10th. And for those under 30, females reported lower happiness than males. The drop in youth happiness isn’t new—it started about 10 years ago but was exacerbated during the pandemic. It appears youth have not recovered from the drop and are now at “midlife crisis” level of discontent, something we normally don’t see until people are in their late 30s or early 40s.

Some of you might remember when the US Surgeon........

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