We Might Be Careful What We Infer From These Happiness Statistics

Here is a list of "top" countries ranked in order of what percent of interviewed people were satisfied according to the question, "In this country, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?"



Possibly more informative is how Americans' answers have fared over time on this poll in terms of percent satisfaction (not relative rank):



(Full article here.) Any poll where UAE and Uzbekistan tie for fifth, ahead of (for example) Canada and Scandinavian countries, suggests at the very least that this isn't measuring what is useful to us, or isn't measuring what we think it is.