Being Rich Does Not Guarantee the Best of Happiness

  •   Tue, May 26 2026
  •   By Sunney Tharappan

May 26, 2026

United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, since 2012, conducts surveys to analyse the data made available to measure the wellbeing of different nations to decide how happy each country is.  To determine each nation’s happiness, the report utilizes the Cantril Ladder questions in six key variables; GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity and freedom from corruption; and relies on the data from the Gallup World Poll. The report is released around 20 March every year, this day is the International Day of Happiness. 140 to 150 countries are measured. This year, while the lowest in the ladder is Afghanistan at 147 rank, the happiest is Finland, followed by Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Netherlands. India is 116, an improved position from118 in the previous year. Pakistan is still better at 104, Nepal at 99, above the Indian ranking; however, Bangladesh is at 127 and Sri anka at 134 below the Indian ranking.

The richest country in the world, the United States of America, is not the happiest country in the world because it stands at 24. Researchers discovered that the dissatisfied youth under twenty five years of age have been the prime factor for the richest country to lose the chance to be in the first five or ten, if not the first itself. So, it is said, being wealthy need not result in happiness, especially when the collective happiness is considered.

Many universities went on to research the reason for a wealthy country like the United States witnesses a steady decline in the Happiness Index during many years. In 2015-16 it was 13 and 14; in 2017-20 it was 18 and 19, in 2021-25, it was 23; so there is a consistency in the fall of the country in the ranking of happiness index. Researchers identified several reasons; such as increased loneliness, reduced social support, political polarisation, increase in suicides, substance abuse and the ever present unreasonable shooting spree in which even school children were killed.

Two major reasons that have been identified by the researchers are worth an analysis. One is about the treatment of migrants who contribute significantly to the physical support systems of the country. Almost 16% of the total US population is foreigners. 29.7 million immigrants constitute one fifth of the workforce of the country. 7.3 million unauthorised workers have to be added to this. The maximum of these are from Latin America, China, India and Philippines. Naturally enough, though contributors to the wealth of the country, they have very little attachment to their inhabiting nation, especially because of the treatment meted out to them. So, they constitute an unhappy set of people. Their contribution to the economic output that makes the country rich does not offer them any happiness. The recent administrative interventions through the ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, had drawn plenty of criticisms and demonstrations on behalf of the immigrants. Surely, these also would have been responsible for the unhappiness of the people in the richest country.

Researchers from a couple of universities in the country refer to the reflections of opinions of many other countries contributing to the unhappiness of the local people. This is with regard to the climate of killings and destruction in many a country that is supported by the United States through the supply of arms to many of these. The maximum killings and destruction in the world in recent times were done, still being done, by Israel and 66 to 69% of arms in this country are being imported from the United States according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The thinking people of the United States feel uncomfortable with this support to violence through indirect means including political support. One has to remember that the United States supports Israel and even joins it in most of the violent attacks of the latter on their neighbouring countries. So, it is possible that a large number of Americans who love peace and creative living are unhappy about the support to violence by their country and therefore, would have recorded negatively in the Gallup World Poll.

Intellectuals in some of the universities who researched on the grading of happiness in the country going down consecutively also looked at the global arms supply by the United States. Several countries are using US made weapons in wars, and also even in smaller skirmishes. Even those considered enemies of the US purchase arms through other countries or groups which buy them from the US. In the global arms export, the US has the highest sales. 42% of the total arms sale in the world is done by the US and the next , nearing this quantum, is  a group of seven countries put together which includes France at 10%, Russia at 07%, Germany at 06% and China at 06% of the global supply.The US is rich through, arguably, arms sales.

It may be important to state here that India is the second largest arms importer, while Ukraine is the first and Saudi Arabia the third. India depends on the US for the past seven years for high end military technology, parts and accessories and the US remains the major supplier to India, though France and Russia follow it. India justifies its need for arms and ammunition as it has two neighbours with whom it had wars earlier.

The US, despite the fact that it remains the wealthiest country in the world, cannot escape from an allegation that its need to supply arms to several other countries are leading to the unhappiness of the other countries which use them in their wars. It is to be noted that the political recognition for Israel came from the United States first, within twenty four hours of the United Nations declaring Israel as an independent nation. Since the USA, which has been supplying arms to that small country; which otherwise could not create enough arms for themselves; is responsible indirectly; sometimes directly too, by joining them like what happened in their war with Iran recently and Lebanon continuously; for the use of arms in the world. Hence, the unhappiness of the common people of the United States.

The US attacked several other countries without the sanction of the United Nations. Its attacks on Iraq for Saddam Hussain’s making of Weapons of Mass Destruction proved to be fallacious and the US killed Saddam Hussain arbitrarily. As far as Libya was concerned, according to the US, it was suspicion that led to the overthrow and killing of Col. Muammar Gaddafi, sending the country into an abyss of disorder for people. The US did the same to other countries like Nicaragua and a few other South American countries, especially more recently to Venezuela. In the last of the cases, its democratically elected president was arrested and handcuffed and brought to the United States to face a trial on a crime that could not be proved, namely, that he helped drug traffickers. It has to be noted that within seven days of the incident, oil companies in that country were taken over by American companies. So, common Americans know very well that what America does is arbitrary against the rule of the United Nations and common justice. How can they be happy? Becoming rich in any way and being on top of the world in wealth does not guarantee happiness.

Cuba is equally interesting to be considered. ‘Next is Cuba’ was the threat that the president of the United States gave. The fact that Marco Antonio Rubio, the present Secretary of State is a migrant from Cuba cannot be forgotten as a background to the threat, not to forget that during the time of Fidel Castro, sixty eight assassin attempts by the CIA failed, and despite the Bay of Pigs incident, Cuba continued to survive as a nation though at present it is in distress with a lot of US sanctions. With such incidents and attitudes of the so called rulers, how can the common people of the country, if they have a head over their shoulders, be happy and contented? Naturally, these factors are reflected in the rating of the World Happiness Index.  

It is worthwhile to refer to Tucker Carlson whom Americans found reasonable, whose independent show was viewed by 120 million people, and who spoke against Market Capitalism which became a religion for many prominent Americans. He spoke about the loss of the courage of truth and innocence and challenged the right of Israel to exist. He opposed liberal internationalism, global track and corporate capitalism. He challenged the idea of killing children in a war. He publicly attacked the right of a country to kill innocent people of another country. He condemned the attack on Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls Elementary School in Minab, Southern Iran, on 28 February 2026, killing 168 girl children and 14 teachers. The simple question is how the people of a country can be happy when they are supportive of such tragic disasters.

However, more interesting is the statement of Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Senator; indeed an unacceptable partisan and communal opinion; that the US, Israel, Iran war is a religious war. He is supposed to have said that it is America’s manifest destiny to bomb all ‘Bad Guys’. He refers to the beauty and duty of wars as a southern Baptist from South Carolina evangelical Christianity. He sees war as an enterprise of capturing resources and land. Naturally, a supporter of the present American president, a real estate broker and developer; he visited Tel Aviv to gather support for the American war. He declared on top of his voice that ‘war is the present and the future.’ About the war in Iran, he stated that it has 31% of the world’s oil reserves and that America, at the end of the war, will have a partnership of this 31% of known reserves. How can normal Americans and those right thinking youth be happy with such people, and therefore, they would not have contributed to the World Happiness Index in a positive way.

When the richest economy is made through arms manufacturing and its trade, and plans to profit from war, such a country cannot be happy, as the unconscious breathing of its people contributes to violence and not to personal, and, naturally, to collective happiness.

 

 

 

 
By Sunney Tharappan
Prof Sunney Tharappan, is director of College for Leadership and HRD, Mangaluru. He trains and writes and lives in Mangaluru. Email: tharappans@gmail.com
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