Research suggests overlooked Indigenous people with low or no income may be happiest of all
PSYCHOLOGY
Anew study has found that we may be overlooking the truly happiest people in the world because they’re rarely included in the figures. In global happiness rankings such as the World Happiness Report (WHR), scientists tend to observe a correlation between high levels of life satisfaction and high income. However, these polls often do not distinguish small-scale Indigenous and local societies from whole nations. In some of these communities, money plays a small role in everyday life.
In fact, the new study suggests that not all happiness is money-related. Instead, it reveals that some societies with low incomes (who depend on nature, rather than money) have remarkably high life satisfaction, which could even make them the happiest people in the world. “The strong correlation frequently observed between income and life satisfaction isn’t universal and proves that wealth – as generated by industrialised economies – is not fundamentally required for humans to lead happy lives,” said Prof Victoria Reyes-García, senior author of the study.
Though not conducted by the same research body as the WHR, the new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) measured happiness in a similar way. The WHR asks respondents to think of a ladder where the best possible life would be a 10 and the worst a 0. The
