How does your country rank?

I don't mean here: "What is its rank?" on the latest trend of city and country surveys that pitch one against the other. Rather, how is this ranking being calculated, and does it work for you? This week, I'm hearing about Canada having ranked 2nd on the happiness scale worldwide. "Happiness scale?", you say. Yes. The OECD Happiness scale. (Because apparently that's where we go to understand what happiness truly means). I do understand why Canada would rank high. This country is a truly wonderful place to live in. Given the increasing number of rankings being developed however (Monocle, The Economist and more), it is worth a deeper look into what factors into the decisions.

Below are extracts from an FT article questioning the matter:

"I spoke to Joel Kotkin, a professor of urban development, and asked him about these surveys. “I’ve been to Copenhagen,” (Monocle’s Number 2) he tells me “and it’s cute. But frankly, on the second day, I was wondering what to do.” So, if the results aren’t to his liking, what does he suggest? “We need to ask, what makes a city great? If your idea of a great city is restful, orderly, clean, then that’s fine. You can go live in a gated community. These kinds of cities are what is called ‘productive resorts’. Descartes, writing about 17th-century Amsterdam, said that a great city should be ‘an inventory of the possible’. I like that description.”

“The other big question,” says Kotkin, “is can someone coming from somewhere else improve themselves, reinvent themselves? Is there upward mobility?” The top cities score badly again. London and New York are magnets for immigrants precisely because they allow those kinds of new beginnings. They do have class structures but they are increasingly malleable."

-Edwin Heathcote, "Liveable vs lovable", Financial Times, May 6, 2011-

The distinction between lovable and livable is a fair one. I would also find it more valuable to look to indices such as the Human Development Index and the Gini Coefficient.

I'd rather let happiness reside in the realm of human possibilities than on an OECD list.