Happyness.

Will Smith did a fine job on the movie of the same name, looking for happiness in all the wrong places and eventually working out having a big fat wallet as a broker made him the happiest. We got the message about sticking to your dreams and that living in toilets is a drag unless you're Devine Brown looking for Hugh Grant but Will's happiness was all about the dollars in the end and it seems the United Nations agrees on some levels.

The United Nations Conference on Happiness, and you thought they were about running the world, distilled its findings into a one hundred page document pointing out the GDP of a country did not account for the happiness of its people but there were individually obvious factors playing a big part. Yes Dorothy, rich people are happier than poor people. The obvious then gave way to the also obvious but not always talked about, like mentally healthy people are happier than mentally ill people, while employed are happier than unemployed. So defining happiness seemed to have a certain monetary bent and wasn't about sitting on a mountain top contemplating bliss and your navel.

Columbia University, who put this report together for the United Nations, had the thinking that science has a lot to do with happiness across the world. I thought Disney had a lot to do with happiness across the world? Seems social factors like personal freedom, self esteem, trust and social support play a big part, apart from the obvious factors of money, money, money. These factors bring up divides between western countries as much as between third world developing countries.

Seems Europe has a much dourer view on inequality and the possibility of people escaping their lowly lot and being happy, with only 40% believing the poor have a chance of escaping poverty versus 70% in the US. That's why Disneyland remains popular in the US, it's about the possibilities and not always what's in front of your face. It's about being relentlessly positive in the US and hitching your star to the dollar, regardless of what the rest of the world thinks. Interestingly for third world countries, happiness has correlation with the quality of human relationships versus income.

Obvious factors such as unemployment certainly have a bearing on those affected but also on those not, who build up anxieties about becoming the former and losing their jobs. Seems even low end quality employment is more satisfying than standing in the dole line and self employment yields even more happiness that working for someone else, especially in the "land of the free". The more fuzzy factors like social well being, personal well being and trust, leading to happiness, often depends on cultural and ideological differences and differs from country to country. The old cash stuffed wallet, would you return it test of trust, has fallen in countries like the US and UK but risen in others like Denmark and Italy. Princess Mary would return it but would Silvio Berlesconi?

Sometimes there are easy fixes to being happy, other than the lotto win and one of those is being married. Seems globally, married people are happier than singles, so I thank my lucky stars I recently married after eighteen years of dating my girl. I would have done it sooner but I only just read the report!

In the end, individuals are accountable for their own happiness, no matter what the GDP of your country may be, after all trust, self esteem, how you treat people are more important than what we sell to China.