The Most Generous Country

According to the World Giving Index (WGI), published by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), based on trends seen in 2014, the most generous country in the world is Myanmar.

The WGI measures three different kinds of giving undertaken by people in the past month: 1. Donation of money, 2. Volunteering and 3. Helping a stranger. For this year 145 countries were surveyed.

Ninety two percent of Myanmar's population donated money and 50% volunteered their time. It is possible that the country's generosity may reflect its culture of Theravada Buddhism.

The other countries forming the list of  top 10 in the WGI are United States, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Sri Lanka, Ireland and Malaysia.

One very interesting finding is that only 5 G20 countries are present in this year's Top 20, indicating that economic prosperity does not automatically lead to increase in generosity.

In this survey, India ranks 106th, last among the South Asian countries. However due to the large population, India has the greatest number of givers. In 2014, more than 183 million gave money and more than 334 million helped a stranger.

Correlation between Generosity and Happiness

I thought it would be a good idea to compare the rankings of the most generous countries with their happiness rankings to determine if there is an apparent correlation between generosity and happiness.

According to the World Happiness Report 2015, the following is the happiness ranking of the top 10 generous nations: Myanmar (129), US (15), New Zealand (9), Canada (5), Australia (10), UK (21), Netherlands (7), Sri Lanka (132), Ireland (18) and Malaysia (61). India, even with a significant number of helpful people, still ranks 117 in the happiness report.

Although a number of factors determine the happiness levels of a nation, it seems obvious that people in happy nations give more, while it is debatable if generous nations are happier.

Social Capital - Why Countries Like India Cannot Ignore It

The third edition of the World HappinessReport published on 23^rd April, 2015 emphatically mentions that the proper measure of social progress should be happiness.

Many countries have pursued GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as a measure of growth. However, a lopsided pursuit of GDP has led to neglect of social and environmental objectives resulting in a negative impact on well-being. Take for example India which has a GDP of USD 2.308 trillion (Nominal; April 2015) and is ranked 7^th in terms of GDP (Nominal). However, India is ranked 117 out of 158 countries in the World Happiness Report. Similarly, in 2014, China had a GDP (Nominal) of approximately USD 10.36 trillion with a GDP rank (Nominal) of 2. However, in happiness measures it is ranked 84^th. Apparently even with a high GDP, people in these countries do not perceive a high quality of life.

Despite the general cheer around the economy and the positive notes on the growth potential, what’s the missing happiness ingredient for India? The top five happiest countries Switzerland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Canada, besides economic development also have a high social capital. High level of social capital includes generalized trust, good governance, and mutual support by individuals within the society. Countries with low social capital exhibit generalized distrust, pervasive corruption, and lawless behavior.

How do countries like India with an apparent low social capital increase it? The report suggests several pathways including education, moral instruction, professional codes of conduct, public opprobrium towards violators of the public trust, more effective regulation by the state to reduce public sector corruption and dangerous anti-social behavior (e.g. financial fraud, pollution, etc.), public policies to narrow income inequalities and strong social safety nets.

With most people absorbed on increasing their financial capital as the way to happiness, I wonder at what stage people will start focusing on investing in social capital.

World Happiness Report

Looking for someplace happy with satisfied people around? Try Denmark. According to the World Happiness Report, it is the happiest country in the world. The other countries in the top 5 happy countries are Norway, Switzerland, Netherlands and Sweden.

The six key variables which have been used to explain the average scores are:

(i) Real GDP per capita
(ii) Healthy life expectancy
(iii) Having someone to count on
(iv) Perceived freedom to make life choices
(v) Freedom from corruption
(vi) Generosity

The Report also shows that happy people live longer, are more productive, earn more, and are also better citizens. 

It appears that there is a growing trend amongst governments to start thinking of aligning policies with what can really improve people's overall well-being rather than just focus on economic growth. Although the report mentions that Bhutan has gone the furthest to measure their progress with reference to the happiness of their citizens, Bhutan has not been included in this list. This has been explained by the fact that  survey questions used to determine happiness levels in the report are not the same as usually used in the country.

The ranks of some other notable countries are: Canada (6), Australia (10), Israel (11), Mexico (16), USA (17), UK (22), Brazil (24), France (25), Germany (26), Singapore (30), Japan (43), Italy (45), Russia (68), China (93) and India (111).