Immigrating to Canada makes people happier, according to the United Nations’ 2018 World Happiness Report, which confirms Canadians are among the most tolerant and welcoming people in the world.
The Happiness Report reveals Canada is “the fourth most accepting country for migrants.” That’s out of 117 nations for which data is available, behind only Iceland, New Zealand and, surprisingly, Rwanda. It’s basically an A+ grade for Canadians.
Despite the media frequently reporting on accusations that Canadians are inclined to be “xenophobic,” this imperfect but generally kind country has been a beacon of light, at least to a fraction of the 700 million people who say they want to permanently leave their homelands.
The annual Happiness Report, which includes a groundbreaking and largely ignored new section on migrants, shows most of the roughly 300,000 immigrants who have been arriving each year in Canada become happier than they were before leaving their country of origin.
Migrants to Canada end up with virtually the same life-satisfaction levels as native-born Canadians. That lead the UN Report to rank Canada as the overall seventh happiest nation on the planet, bested only by Finland, Norway, Denmark and other northern European countries.
While most Canadians continue to recognize that acts of hatred and racism occur, including the murderous attack in early 2017 on worshippers at a Quebec City mosque, the UN report might remind Canadians that discrimination is on a continuum, and Canada is at the more positive end of it.
The UN’s remarkable figures counter claims by many activists, academics and real-estate industry lobbyists, who routinely throw out the accusation that Canadians are racists. Such critical Canadians don’t seem to recognize, for one, how bad things are elsewhere, especially in big countries. The Happiness Report found Russians are among the most antagonistic toward foreigners. Attitudes are also at rock bottom in South Korea and Pakistan, which are among the top six source countries of emigrants to Canada, and which themselves take in almost no migrants.
Canada, meanwhile, maintains its reputation as a tolerant country while being home to 8.2 million foreign-born people (7.5 million of whom are immigrants). That’s one in four of all residents. The foreign-born population of Greater Vancouver is even higher, at 45 per cent, while its 32 per cent in Calgary and 49 per cent in Greater Toronto.
“Of the 12 countries with populations exceeding 100 million, only three had foreign-born population shares exceeding one per cent — Japan at 1.7 per cent, Pakistan at 1.9 per cent and the U.S. at 15 per cent.” The two most populous countries, China and India, have virtually no foreign-born.
The UN, relying on pollsters from Gallup, tallied each country’s quotient for tolerance by asking 36,000 people three questions: Whether it was a “good thing” or “bad thing” that immigrants were living in their country, were becoming their neighbours and marrying into their families.
UN chart shows the most-accepting countries for immigrants in dark green, followed by light green. The least-accepting nations are in black, followed by grey.
While Canada came out as the fourth most accepting, a bit ahead of the Netherlands, Australia and the U.S., some of the least-accepting countries for migrants were Pakistan, Greece, Egypt and Poland. (The report generally avoids using the term xenophobic.)
India and China were not as hostile as South Korea, Pakistan and Eastern Europe, but still ranked poorly. Another troubling finding was that these two major immigrant-source countries to Canada rank low for happiness, with China coming in 86th and India 133rd.
The main conclusions of the UN Happiness Report were that people who leave “unhappy” countries, where people lack trust, to go to happier countries such as Canada and Austria wind up matching the host society for happiness, with the second generation remaining at the same level as the first generation. But there are many winners and losers in the process, including among family members left behind.
And, despite Canadians’ open attitude to the foreign born, they seem to have limits. Most Canadians are not as ebullient as Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who recently raised the country’s immigration levels from 240,000, in 2014, to 340,000.
In February, Trudeau said in Mumbai, India: “Quite frankly, the most common complaint I get from Canadians, from Canadian businesses, from people in general, is that you’re not bringing in enough immigrants. And that’s a rare thing in this world.”
Trudeau was ignoring, however, polling done in late 2017 by the Angus Reid Institute, which found 57 per cent of Canadians believe the country “should accept fewer immigrants and refugees.”
And it’s even possible some surveyed Canadians were acting more positively than they actually feel. A much-cited study by Alexander Janus, of the University of California, Berkeley, found people “dramatically underestimate” their worries about immigration when directly asked by pollsters. Using a “list” technique to tease out respondents’ authentic feelings from those they believe socially desirable, Janus found roughly one third of liberal Americans, for instance, say they’re satisfied with immigration rates when they actually want them reduced.
Noting that “one of the most difficult issues in all social science” is dealing with how migration affects members of a host society, the Happiness Report cautions that certain policies are needed to ensure Canadians and others remain open. The report said leaders of immigrant-receiving countries should be aware that “moderate flows of migrants are more tolerable for the native-born than big influxes of new arrivals.”
Finally, the UN Report recognizes that, with 700 million people wanting to permanently leave their home country, it’s not possible for the few dozen countries that welcome immigrants to make them all happier by taking them in.
Therefore the Happiness report suggests the best way for rich countries to help is to find more ways to support unhappy people in their homelands.
“There are clearly limits to the annual flows which can be accommodated without damage to the social fabric that provides the very basis of a country’s attraction to immigrants,” says the Happiness report.
“One obvious solution, which has no upper limit, is to raise the happiness of people in the sending countries — perhaps by the traditional means of foreign aid and better access to rich-country markets, but more importantly by helping them to grow their own levels of trust, and institutions of the sort that make possible better lives in the happier countries.”
I have had the pleasure of being on the Expert Advisory Committee for the Canadian Index for Measuring Integration with John Helliwell and others, and learned and appreciated the insights from his work:
The world needs more . . . Norway.
Or at least, we should all be more like Norwegians, who have apparently discovered the fountain of well-being, despite being most famously associated with Edvard Munch’s agonized The Scream.
Now, I’ve always known that Norway was in a league of its own for friendliness and contentment and hospitality, which is why I’ve long advocated for the Winter Olympics to be permanently sited in Lillehammer or Oslo. And of course they’re a winter sports dynamo, collecting 107 gold medals in Games competition. If they ever get really good at hockey, Canada will be in trouble. Fortunately for us, they prefer cross country skiing and biathlon. Those sports are national passions and quirks.
For all my life, Canadians have been compared, unfavourably, to Swedes — you know, the average 60-year-old Swede fitter than the average 30-year-old Canadian. But apparently we should cast our eyes further west in Scandinavia if we want to lead cheerful and gratifying lives.
The proof is in the World Happiness Report, released Monday, with Norway topping the tables, vaulting four spots to Numero Uno over last year, measured by economics, health, life expectancy, sense of community and various other polling data. In reaching the heights of fulfilment, Norway has pushed Denmark down to No. 2. Denmark actually has a Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen so they take the subject seriously. The only Dane I know is Maple Leaf goalie Frederik Andersen and he doesn’t come across as particularly jolly, especially after the team loses another shootout (1-for-8 going into Monday night’s game against Boston.)
In fact, scoring difference among the four happiest nations — Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland — is just about statistically insignificant, beyond bragging rights.
John Helliwell, lead author of the report which was produced by the United Nations and an economist at the University of British Columbia, compares the apex jostling to Premier League football. “You’re not going to expect the same team to win all the time. They’re going to have to take turns winning games.”
Canada was ranked seventh among 155 countries so we remain a pleased as punch bunch.
Norway is the happiest country on Earth, report says
“It’s pretty straightforward,” Helliwell told the Star about the quantifying of indexes, which involves questioning 1,000 people from each country. “The question the rankings are based on asks people to think of their life as a ladder, with the best possible life being a 10 and the worst a zero. That’s it.”
Those answers are averaged. “It’s not our decision. It’s very democratic.”
There’s apparently no deception to the thing, no padding. Although it’s odd that a country such as Finland, which has among the highest alcoholism and suicide rates in Europe, should come in fifth. Perhaps they’re happily inebriated during all those months of grim, grey wintry funk before jumping off a roof. In any event, seasonal affective disorder apparently doesn’t impact on life evaluation by citizens.
“That’s a good point,” says Helliwell, who in the past has studied suicide in Finland. “Finland is a bit of an outlier on suicide. The weights were a little different so that divorce and belief in God were much more important in avoiding suicide, while good government was much more important in supporting well-being. Trust and connections with others are both high in Finland. They fit the well-being equation very well.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, happiness in the United States is declining, America slipped to 14th from 13th. Sad. Except the data was collected before Donald Trump was elected president, so can’t be blamed on him, although the researchers expect unhappiness south of the border to continue on a downward path.
“There’s clearly more polarization of political thought in the United States. Often polarization tends to increase fractiousness and decrease mutual trust. Those are bad for happiness. But we’ll just have to see how this works out. It’s always a mistake to forecast if you don’t have to.”
Jeffrey Sachs, the esteemed Columbia University economist and author of the report’s chapter on the U.S., writes: “The United States offers a vivid portrait of a country that is looking for happiness in all the wrong places. “The country is mired in a rolling social crisis that is getting worse.’’
He points the finger of blame at soaring income inequality, slashing of federal agency budgets for justice, health and education, the rise of big money in American politics and an “open-ended global war on terror” that has helped to stoke a climate of fear.
The happiness report, published annually since 2012, has practical application, says Helliwell. “What kind of public policies will help to produce happiness? That’s the whole purpose of the happiness report. To raise the awareness that there are these scientifically replicable measures of the quality of life that don’t give you the same answers as GDP and don’t invite the same policies that maximizing GDP would mean.
Politicians and policy-makers should pay attention. “They ought to be thinking about how happy people are and how happy should they be with the services they’re provided. If these numbers are taken seriously, it’s to raise the level of policy awareness and discussion.”
Multicultural Meanderings 