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by ch4s3 11 days ago
Finland is consistently ranked as the happiest country in the world and has a home ownership rate comparable to the US. Denmark ranks 3rd and has a slightly lower home ownership rate than the US. Oh, and Singapore ranks 36th[1], while the US is 23rd[2].

So you're probably wrong on all points here.

[1] https://data.worldhappiness.report/country/SGP

[2] https://data.worldhappiness.report/country/USA

I'm curious what people are quibbling with here? Romania has the world's highest rate of home ownership at 96% and only ranks as 34th in happiness. Or maybe Kazakhstan but I can't verify the data on that, and it's right beside Romania in happiness. Switzerland has the world's 4th lowest rate of home ownership and ranks 10th happiest. It seems like from a data perspective there is no empirical support for the idea that home ownership directly correlates to societal happiness.

2 comments

I might also point out that Finland has very good social programs, probably some of the best in Europe
Right, my point is that you can't boil happiness down to a single causal factor and if you could the evidence doesn't support home ownership being that factor.
> my point is that you can't boil happiness down to a single causal factor

This is not a claim I ever made. The claim I made was that homeownership was of significantly higher importance than affordability of cheap consumer goods. Obviously there are other factors.

Well your alleged correlation doesn’t support that claim, and I showed a number of counter examples.
> I'm curious what people are quibbling with here? Romania has the world's highest rate of home ownership at 96% and only ranks as 34th in happiness.

which means they are happier than 35th, the France, which has double GDP per capita

So you're probably wrong on all points here by your own data

I'm sharing Gallop survey data about happiness, it's the "happiness" data everyone uses, and what OP was referring to as well. I'd challenge the idea that GDP per capita correlates to happiness. Mississippi has a higher GDP per capita than France and I'm not sure that tells us anything about who is happier.

> probably wrong on all points here by your own data

again, it's not my data its the data OP referenced initially, I just linked to it.