This is one of those things that just is not true, no matter what sort of evidence is presented, because actual humans can go walk outside their door and see it isn't.

Denmark has ranked as one of the happiest countries for years running, but, Dane here, we hoover up antidepressants like it was our breakfast. There are also deep cultural factors at play that make Danes more likely to mask that everything is fine when it isn't. We have an extremely high incidence of cheating on our partners, which, surprise, comes from a talent for deception, both toward self and others, and we are extremely emotionally avoidant, which results in our nationally very high rate of alcohol consumption and alcoholism.

These happiness indexes are a complete sham and don't observe the full spectrum that goes into how cultures present themselves versus lived reality.

>a lack of imagination on what could be better

I'd argue it's likelier that people are more informed about their absolute position globally. Any screen gets you the mental image of the top of the ladder. So happy people would end up scoring themselves low, because there's a globalized vision of wealth nowadays.

Besides there's a difference in life self-evaluation and experienced happiness, so the report really is a misnomer.

It's especially hard to express "happiness" across languages. It's a word that is hard to define and generally has no perfect synonyms between languages. It ranges broadly from "present feeling of contentment" to "ultimate feeling of fulfillment in life," and it seems like the survey is aiming for the latter aspect. Therefore the ladder analogy is a decent way to communicate that.

An obvious issue with the metaphor that comes to mind is that if you consider yourself to have a pretty good life, to be overall happy and satisfied, but you think it's possible to have an objectively much better life, then you'd rank yourself relatively low. And vice versa, if you think your life sucks but it could be much worse you'd rank yourself relatively high.

Do you mean normal like James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, Richard M. Nixon, and George W. Bush?

> Canada here. Feels like we're barely hanging on to rung 5 or 6 and about to fall to the bottom.

The Missing Middle podcast went into this in a recent episode, and it's age-dependent: older folks are happier (i.e., they have purchased homes), while younger folks are less happy (cost of living). We Canadians basically have age-dependent wealth-class nowadays.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dizaUBC22o4&t=4m13s

Also Canada, and I disagree pretty strongly with your post. Those two statistics have little bearing on happiness. Housing costs and healthcare access are much bigger concerns.

Here's the more important data point - Canada lost to the USA in three 2026 Winter Olympic Hockey finals. The whole country is hanging their collective heads in shame...