According to world hapiness ranking, Mexico is 10th happiest country in the world, but I am having hard time believing that. I hear so many Mexicans only saying they hate living there and I always see cartel and economic problems mentioned when Mexico is on the headline.
https://worldhappiness.report/
Note the same study says Israel is 8th happiest country in the world despite the conflict so i doubt that study is legit.
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From what I’ve experienced, Mexicans aren’t actually aware of their own situation. Just ask any Argentinian who’s spent any time online. They think they are a first world country with a thriving economy. If they go out and see their city’s major’s head on top of a car, they probably assume it’s just a SFX prop.
My theory is that they read HDI numbers backwards (the lower, the better), which would explain their attitude toward us. I’d be very happy if I thought I lived in Switzerland.
Most of those ranking lists are pseudo science.
[deleted]
Tortas de jamon.
well this might answer your question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-QqV40Wpuk
Best wishes,
someone from Reddit
Food
You’d be happy too if you were the chingòn
Those kids of studies should be taken with a grain of salt, with that said, I can see Mexico being too when it comes to happiness. We’re very good at ignoring our problems and pretending that the rest of the world is worse "por lo menos no tenemos tiroteos en nuestras escuelas", we are conformists, we conform to our lives and situation if we have enough money to have a roof over our heads and good on the table we’re happy people.
We also live day to day, we rank low when it comes to personal debt on the global stage. We don’t think, "well I have a stable job, I could make payments on this to be able to afford it" if we can’t afford it we don’t think that maybe tomorrow we can.
The simplicity of the culture makes us happy.
Why are they happy?
https://preview.redd.it/7i5nv2oq7pre1.png?width=1680&format=png&auto=webp&s=9cceb917d6e3ec9f72614492bd3dcd6f18fb5b6b
DF, Distrito Federal
Food beautiful beaches lucha libre ruins of ancient civilizations pretty woman im pretty happy but the country is in shambles rn narco violence robberies femicides are in a high rise
Because besides insecurity, it’s honestly not such a bad place to live. People compare us to the US a lot because they’re right next door, but that’s unfair. Economically, we do pretty damn well for a developing country, and we enjoy a good relationship with nearly every country in the world, so aside from the US, we have nothing to fear in terms of international conflict.
There’s a reason so many foreigners are moving here. You can live very well with what would be a pittance in rich countries. I live in Jalisco, which has a lot of Americans and Canadians. Most of them think living in a place with no extreme weather, with good food, access to nearly all of the commodities they are used and friendly people is a no trainer, especially when they can buy or rent a big home for the price of a tiny apartment back home.
Mexico has a very family orientated culture. Contrary to what many people "feel" the economy is honestly doing fine, salaries are high, so people can and do spend money and have fun.
Whenever you see a ranking like this, you need to look for the methods employed. Let me quote:
>Our happiness ranking is based on a single life evaluation question called the Cantril Ladder:
>Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top.
>The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you.
>On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?
This one seems pretty good to me. It measures something that should be a good proxy of happiness, whereas other happiness indexes measure things like standard of living (not the same thing). Though in this one standard of living does play a role. Finland is # 1 after all. You can imagine that someone in Finland might say, yea, we have it really good here, but not be happy per se. Indeed, Finland used to have one of highest suicide rates in the world.
In any case, it’s not surprising that you’d find a few Latin American countries near the top. It’s a cultural thing.
Those evaluations are done with the Cantril Ladder (see page 15 of the report).
In essence, they ask people to imagine a ladder with 10 steps, where the 10th step is the best possible life and 0 is the worst possible. Then they ask what step they’re in.
For more info on the methodological problems with the Cantril Ladder, see this article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-52939-y
If you’ll allow me to hypothesize a little bit, I think collective trauma and suffering by the jewish diaspora may contribute to Israel having a low imagined 0 and thus ranking themselves fairly high up.
As for Mexico, idk. I am Mexican (avg answer 6.9) and you can probe me with questions but I don’t have a good answer as to why. But yeah people like the OCDE aknowledges that mexicans are happier than would be predictive by objective meassures so your observation isn’t odd: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/what-makes-mexicans-happy_5js4h5qp6l0w-en.html
I say its because we have nicer culture and food. /s
Well, for starters, obviously the problematic news are the ones that are going to be getting more worldwide attention. That’s just how the media works.
That being said, we Mexicans also have a weird attitude when it comes to our country. We hate living in a cartel controlled country but we also tend to just not worry about it and live life as usual. We like partying, booze and great food and no amount of bad news is really going to change that.
My guess is most people only care about being satisfied with their lives, if they have a job, can put food on the table, enjoy something as a family every once in a while and have a roof on their heads, most would say they are happy with their lives
I would say, family, food, parties, overall friendliness
Spite. We survive out of spite and why are going to enjoy every little shred of happiness we can get on our hands out of spite.
Cuz they got the best food in the world easily
i love how when you actually look at the breakdown by category
……. we score horribly low in everything except "positive emotions", which kind of shits on any validity of the study from an imperical stand point
but from a vague cultural stand point i guess you can say for many in LA, not just mexico, life is hard but we have cultural elements that keep us at least feeling somewhat better
or you could say that they other tested categories actually are not the top or best things to help gauge if a cultural is truly happy or not
Before you go dismissing things, this isn’t exactly a new finding. This well respected paper (1100 citations!) found mexico to be the greatest increase in happiness between 1990 and 2010:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228895932_Development_Freedom_and_Rising_Happiness_A_Global_Perspective_1981-2007
but I think this is a cute little blog that explores why some things are sometimes counter intuitive:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/observations/finland-is-the-happiest-country-in-the-world-and-finns-arent-happy-about-it/
To quickly summarize: "Happiness" is a broad term that means different things, and depending on how you phrase the question. Is it satisfaction with your conditions in life? That correlates well with material conditions and the nordic countries rank near the top. Is it moment to moment positive emotions? Then Latin American countries rank near the top. Is it feeling fulfilled and like your life has meaning? Then religious countries in Africa rank near the top.
Because (my take) is Mexicans live in the moment.
We don’t really have economic problems at the moment. It’s been shaky because of Trump, but screw him. Besides, redditors complain a lot.
Cartels?
Happiness not always comes with economic richness, it’s been studied why latin American countries are always on top in these list and few theories given are: the weather and the heavy rely in communities and families, people tend to be more friendly and rely more on friends and families that makes people happier
My fiancé is Mexican so I spend a good 5 months of the year in mexico with her and her family. Sure they don’t have a lot of money, but their family bond is something that I don’t really see in the US. So my perspective really is compared to life in the US. In the US it’s always a game of status, in mexico it seems to me that it’s more about just being happy in life. People seem more grateful for the small things in mexico compared to the US. The best way I can describe it is that yes, they do strive for more, but are happy where they’re at. In the US if you don’t have lots then it seems most people are just miserable and make their entire life out of having more (or trying to make the image that they have more). Mexico has lots of attractions that are free or very cheap, to where you can still enjoy dates/ time out without having to break the bank. In the US (where I live at least) there’s not many free options, especially when it’s winter. To do anything out you’ll need a minimum of 80-100$. But in the end to me I think the culture of Mexico is very strong in family and accepting what you have in life, and being grateful for it. I can say for sure I’m 1000% more happy when I’m in Mexico. It’s not like I’m staying in Polanco, Mexico City with all the rich people. I go to Ecatepec where my girlfriend and her family lives. The only thing I ever wish when I’m there is to take a hot shower for more than 4-5 minutes 🥲
I live in the US because I have a pretty good job here and love it. But other than that, the quality of life in the US is low when it comes to social life. People, particularly over, idk, 30, don’t want to make friends. They have their circle of friends and are happy with that. Family ties are weak, if thry even exist. Lots of dysfunctional families too. Socializing is a big hassle here in general.
In México, life is a lot more fun. People love going out, for dinner for drinks, to the movies, whatever. They also love getting together. Family ties are strong. You never feel alone if you fall into a hard place. Your family has got you.
Life in general is more relaxed than in developed and rich countries. Not just comparing with the US but I also lived in Europe and it’s similar (except maybe Spain, I lived in Spain and they are similar to Mexicans in those regards).
So, I have no idea about that study but life in Mexico can be pretty relaxed and fun. I know I’m generalizing and many Mexicans will claim their life is hell but I seriously think you can live a happy life there.
The media and news make it seem like Mexico is a living hell and a mess but it’s really not so.
I wouldn’t say it’s a happy country.. But joyful, warm, and with a festive atmosphere. And it’s also well known that humor is a defense mechanism for coping with tragedies, and there’s plenty of that in Mexico.
There’s no standard for measuring happiness because the concept of happiness is very relative. While for some, happiness is moments of leisure and distraction based on materialism and consumerism (which in many cases are fleeting), for others, it’s a lasting state of fulfillment that is built day by day.
So, how can you claim that a country is happy if the very concept of happiness is quite ambiguous?
Great food, cool people amd beautiful women. Qhy wouldnt they bê happy?
But also the weather, sunshine and food.
>I hear so many Mexicans only saying they hate living there and I always see cartel and economic problems mentioned when Mexico is on the headline.
Most of those mexicans are usually folks on the internet who would be still miserable if Mexico was as wealthy and safe as Sweden or Norway, there is no pleasing them as most of them are just right wing folks who will always blame others for their misery.
About the cartels, Mexico a country of 130m people the size of Western Europe, yeah shit is bad in Tijuana, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas and Guanajuato but that barely covers like 15% of the total population if not less. The vast majority of mexicans don’t interact with the cartels whatsoever, economic wise we are doing actually fine, as much as the current government can be criticized for many things they have been increasing the social programs and the middle class has actually grown in the last 20 years, and the cartel headlines will always happen in the same way you’ll always hear of muslim terror attacks in Europe or mass shootings in the US, bad news sell more than good news.
Taco
The more ignorant a person or a people are, the happier they are.
Ignorance is bliss
On a serious note, because the average Mexican is blissfully ignorant about what it could be, we have violence so normalized that a literal extermination camp being found just provokes the reaction of "yeah, that happens", I live in Yucatán which is by far the safest state in the nation and the reactions of people from other states rlly baffle me, some people I worked with have asked me things like "how much do the narco charges here for putting a business?" or "where do we pay to the narco?" As if that sht was a normal thing everywhere, or foreign friends being scared of going out at night or to remote locations, or leaving common things outside their homes as if they were going to get stolen, or questioning if the police was real police or narcos, or some family outside family not letting their teenage children go alone with friends, much less at night, or things like assuming all officers are corrupt and want to get money out of you, or that authorities wont act up, or that going back or asking for something you lost/forgot will be useless and has already been stolen, like yes, many of this things might happen here too, but they are not a fact of life that you have to live with, everything like that doesn’t just happen and you have to accept it, but the average mexican does so and just chooses to not care and focus on the good things only, laughing the pain away is as mexican of a practice as it gets
Because they’re scamming all the tourists and laughing all the way to the bank.
We are very social, we have great food, great weather in most of the country, sadly too close to the USA which means guns drugs and violence, but the rest is great
No rules or real laws most likely. When in Mexico we can kinda just do and live however we want.
Less propagandized by media to feel misery and selfloathing. No race shaming, for example.
family time and good food keeps people happy (also applies to Israeli culture). it’s actually in the report.
no idea if it applies to Finland and Sweden tho
La raspa. I heard a Vietnamese version of it once.
Lol every argentinian comment just cant help themselves shitting on Mexico
Well things are bad but things have always been bad, why should we be sad?
Besides, there’s good stuff to enjoy as well.
Colombia tends to rank very highly too – the simple answer is that the surveys/studies just aren’t done very well. The long answer takes ages, but basically there’s a lot that isn’t counted well, plus some cultural issues.
It’s a bit like calculating the most expensive city to live in – it’s a nightmare to do the maths on that. Often the lazy option of comparing a (WEIRD) basket of goods is used, meaning places like Tōkyō and Singapore jump massively.
Idk Mexico but the U.S LIVES on 2 things, anti depressants and glutonous fast food. I don’t buy it as being #25
I don’t buy that list, it has strong inconsistencies. USA #24?! get outta here.
Handouts. Most people here are on a handout so they are happy cause they dont know said handouts come with long term consequences like more poverty and misery.