The average happiness scores in this figure are simply the average response from
a 7-item qualitative response to the question: “If you were to consider your life in
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general, how happy or unhappy would you say you are, on the whole?” 3 The overall
pattern in this chart is qualitatively robust to alternative ways of measuring happiness,
including Blanchflower and Oswald’s preferred comparison, which derives from
comparing country fixed-effects in an ordered logit regression, controlling for a range of
individual-level controls.