America in numbers: confidence & happiness quantified

Saturday, December 09, 2006 at 04:24 PM

There's a site called Nation Master, which purports to compare facts and characteristics of different countries.  I have no idea how reliable the data is, or how you could ever get reliable data on these issues, but here are some stats I found interesting.

Confidence of U.S. citizens in their social institutions (from highest to lowest level of confidence)

Police: 73%
Church: 72%
Armed forces: 65%
Civil service: 56%  
Companies: 52%  
Legal system: 48%  
Press: 44%  
Parlament: 38%  (I assume that should be Congress, but, since I don't know the source...)
Trade unions: 34%  

We trust the soldiers and the police, and, of course, the clergy (their recent history of molestation and abuse and lying about it notwithstanding), and we pretty much trust corporations, but not the press, the legal system, or lawmakers.  And people don't think we're primed for a real and swift slide into Fascism?

Percent of citizens in 50 countries reporting they are "Quite happy"

#1   Poland: 73%    
#2   Finland: 72%    
#3   Italy: 69%    
#4   France: 69%    
#5   Bangladesh: 67%    
#6   Azerbaijan: 67%    
#7   Norway: 65%    
#8   Spain: 64%    
#9   Japan: 63%    
#10   Hungary: 62%    
#11   Portugal: 61%    
#12   Austria: 60%    
#13   Latvia: 60%    
#14   Denmark: 60%    
#15   Uruguay: 59%    
#16   Estonia: 59%    
#17   Sweden: 59%    
#18   Brazil: 58%    
#19   Switzerland: 57%    
#20   Croatia: 57%    
#21   Australia: 56%    
#22   Netherlands: 55%    
#23   Canada: 55%    
#24   Belgium: 55%    
#25   Slovenia: 55%    
#26   Iceland: 55%    
#27   Romania: 55%    
#28   United Kingdom: 55%
#29   Argentina: 53%    
#30   United States: 53%
#31   Ireland: 53%    
#32   Philippines: 52%    
#33   Georgia: 52%    
#34   Armenia: 51%    
#35   Lithuania: 51%    
#36   China: 49%    
#37   Slovakia: 48%    
#38   India: 47%    
#39   Turkey: 46%    
#40   Chile: 46%    
#41   Ghana: 45%    
#42   Russia: 44%    
#43   Ukraine: 43%    
#44   Mexico: 43%    
#45   Dominican Republic: 41%    
#46   Belarus: 41%    
#47   Moldova: 40%    
#48   Venezuela: 39%    
#49   Bulgaria: 31%    
#50   Nigeria: 28%

"Happiness net"{+} in 50 countries

{+}This statistic is compiled from responses to the survey question: "Taking all things together, would you say you are: very happy, quite happy, not very happy, or not at all happy?". The "Happiness (net)" statistic was obtained via the following formula: the percentage of people who rated themselves as either "quite happy" or "very happy" minus the percentage of people who rated themselves as either "not very happy" or "not at all happy".

#1   Iceland: 94%    
#2   Netherlands: 91%    
#3   Sweden: 91%    
#4   Denmark: 91%    
#5   Australia: 90%    
#6   Switzerland: 89%    
#7   Ireland: 89%    
#8   Norway: 88%    
#9   Venezuela: 87%    
#10   United Kingdom: 87%    
#11   Belgium: 86%    
#12   Philippines: 85%    
#13   United States: 84%
#14   France: 84%    
#15   Finland: 83%    
#16   Austria: 81%    
#17   Canada: 75%    
#18   Poland: 74%    
#19   Japan: 72%    
#20   Turkey: 71%    
#21   Bangladesh: 70%    
#22   Spain: 68%    
#23   Italy: 64%    
#24   Uruguay: 60%    
#25   Argentina: 59%    
#26   Brazil: 59%    
#27   Azerbaijan: 56%    
#28   Chile: 52%    
#29   China: 49%    
#30   Portugal: 48%    
#31   Mexico: 48%    
#32   Dominican Republic: 47%    
#33   Hungary: 46%    
#34   Nigeria: 46%    
#35   Ghana: 43%    
#36   India: 40%    
#37   Slovenia: 32%    
#38   Croatia: 31%    
#39   Latvia: 27%    
#40   Georgia: 27%    
#41   Estonia: 26%    
#42   Romania: 23%    
#43   Armenia: 14%    
#44   Lithuania: 10%    
#45   Slovakia: 4%    
#46   Russia: 2%    
#47   Ukraine: -4%    
#48   Belarus: -8%    
#49   Moldova: -12%    
#50   Bulgaria: -24%

Well, at least we don't live in the negative range.