How happy are we? There are lots of ways to measure that, although it’s not always a simple question to answer. The idea of happiness and what makes us happy can also vary a lot from person to person.
The World Happiness Index aims to get a sense of it, using metrics including healthy life expectancy, generosity and positive and negative emotions. The most recent report, which takes in data averaged between 2022-2024, finds Finland as the happiest country on Earth, followed by Denmark, Iceland and Sweden. The U.S. is ranked 24th, just behind the U.K. and just ahead of Belize; that’s the lowest we’ve ever ranked in the report’s more than decade-long history.
So clearly, there’s a lot to talk about when it comes to happiness. Over the next three days, we’ll be looking at the issue of happiness and how we impact it.
Anthony Rendon, speaker emeritus of the California Assembly, a few years back, decided to try to find out what role government has in people’s happiness. The result was a first-of-its kind legislative committee to consider happiness as a policy issue.
The result was a report looking at how policymakers in California can have an impact on making residents there happy — or unhappy. But, can government actually legislate happiness? And wouldn’t laws that make some people happy also make other people — unhappy?
Rendon joined The Show to discuss what led him to create this committee in the first place.
Full conversation
ANTHONY RENDON: Well, I’ve always been interested in really sort of fundamental questions. I studied philosophy in school. It’s what I got my Ph.D. in. And so questions of justice, questions of beauty, questions of truth, knowledge. Those have always been the things that interest me.
It occurred to me, particularly after watching and seeing a little bit of the academic work, that we in politics, but particularly here in California, we never really talked much about happiness, which is the only reason we should be in this job is to make sure people are happy. It’s the only reason most of us probably wake up in the morning.
And I thought it was something that, how can you possibly want to make people’s lives better if you’re not thinking about what makes them happy?
MARK BRODIE: It’s interesting to hear you say that the main job of an elected official is to make people happy. I’m guessing that is not something that you were hearing from a lot of your colleagues.
RENDON: Well, I think I should back up. I think the main job of the government should be to create conditions in which people can live lives that are happy. I don’t think it’s the job of the government necessarily to make people happy. But I think in terms of making, creating conditions — whether they’re relating to housing, whether relating to health care, those types of things — I think that’s what we do. I think that’s what we should do.
BRODIE: So in your mind, what actually is the role of government in creating happiness? Like, what should the government do? What can the government do?
RENDON: Well, I think we should first back up. And the point of this select committee was always to ask fundamental questions about happiness. What makes people happy? If government can accomplish some of those things, great. If it’s not the role of government, if it’s strictly tied to family, then that means the answer is no. Government has no role in it.
So initially my goal was to start asking questions about what makes people happy, regardless of whether or not those things have anything to do with government. If there’s no role for government, that’s fine. Then we, you know, we scratched that off the list and we know that’s not our role.
But during the hearings, we talked a lot about people know that having opportunities for shared space is really important. Obviously, parks in urban planning is important. We discovered that intergenerational connections are so incredibly important, particularly to older folks, and having those ties to younger folks. So it’s looking at those fundamental aspects of happiness and to see whether or not government has a role in them or not.
BRODIE: What surprised you with what people told you when you started asking these questions?
RENDON: I think what surprised me is the extent to which people hadn’t asked the questions before, or hadn’t even thought about it. And I think that’s sad. I think that says a lot about our society. I think it says a lot about our lack of introspection as a society and as individuals. I think more than anything, that was stunning to me.
BRODIE: So what did you do with the results or what do you hope that future legislatures in California — now that these questions have been asked and people have answered them — like what kinds of policies would you expect to see coming out of the the California legislature to address some of these issues?
RENDON: I think opportunities for more communal spaces in our society that seems to be so important. Isolation is a huge problem, particularly with social media, and COVID happening quite recently. Having opportunities for social interaction is very important, whether those are tied into our physical space, or whether those are sort of opportunities, you know, the way we sort of construct work, the way we construct our schools are important.
Another thing that’s very important to people is free time and how they invest that free time. And I think we can look at ways of allowing, in the workplace, allowing more opportunities for that as well.
BRODIE: In listening to some of those policy areas, it strikes me that these are not like the hot button, controversial issues that you see a lot of politicians yelling at each other about, either on the floors of legislative chambers or on cable news. These are almost more basic than that. Is that a fair assessment, do you think?
RENDON: Absolutely. Yeah. I’ve always been interested again in things that are really fundamental. And I think when a lot of that stuff, to a large extent, I think seems like a distraction to people. It’s easy politics. It’s easy to preach to the choir. It’s easy to preach to your constituents because you already know what they think about some of those issues.
But this is something that people, at least in the United States, haven’t been asking. A lot of places have been looking at these questions in the past, whether it’s academically at Oxford. Nepal has a way of measuring their gross national happiness. So it seems like countries and places all over the world have been looking at this, but not really in the US. And I think we need to.
MARK BRODIE: It’s interesting because I think if you ask a lot of people not just in California but pretty much anywhere, sort of a basic question: Do politics make you happy? I’m guessing that a lot of people would say, “No, they don’t.” And it’s just sort of an interesting idea that — as you’re saying — this is sort of the fundamental question that policy should be asking: Are we doing what we can to let people live good lives, to let them sort of live the way they want to live?
And yet on sort of a macro level, for a lot of people, politics is more anxiety inducing than happiness inducing.
RENDON: Yeah. And to a large extent, I think we have constructed it that way. We’ve constructed the conversations that way. I was just talking to a group of students right now. I told them I’ve never watched a presidential debate in my life. I’m not interested in politics on that level. I don’t watch MSNBC, I don’t watch CNN, I don’t watch Fox.
Politics on that level is incredibly dull to me. It’s not interesting to me. I care about the impact, the intersection between public policy and people’s lives. And, you know, I think we have begun to think about politics as a sport, about who got who and who got over on who and and all that kind of nonsense that, again, is not fundamental either to politics or to our own lives.
BRODIE: So I’ve got to ask, when you were serving in the Legislature and you would ask people like, “What can we do to make you happy?” — did anybody say, “I wish you guys would all just go away”?
RENDON: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And that’s a fair answer. I think some people want to be left alone, and that’s an important part of the conversation. So yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. A lot of people want to be left alone. A lot of people want to be left alone by government. And that’s totally fair. That has to be part of the data.
BRODIE: Do you foresee this becoming more of a topic of conversation among policymakers going forward? You mentioned that not many are doing it now. Do you see a time when it might be more of a topic on the agenda?
RENDON: I hope so. It certainly is in terms of academia. The World Happiness Report comes out once a year, tends to get a lot of press. I think politics is not a place where you get quick wins. These, again, are fundamental, philosophical questions. Doesn’t mean they’re not data driven.
And for me, that was ultimately what I wanted to do. I never wanted this to be some sort of new-agey weird thing. I wanted this to be data driven. And there’s 25 years of data just strictly from the World Happiness Report, which started at the U.N., has now been taken over by Oxford.
So there’s a lot of hard data on this. And for me, it’s important that we focus on that.
