Stability Breeds Happiness

The Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) assigns "Happiness Scores" to 145 countries based on six factors: GDP per capita, Social support, Generosity, Freedom, Trust in Government, and Health. The Slopegraph below shows how these Happiness Scores have changed from 2015 to 2017 for all tracked countries.

The data shows that the happiest countries in the rankings are the most stable. In this case, stable is defined as less than 2% change. See for yourself! Move the slider below so that it is measuring happiness changes of > 2%. You will notice that the top 10 or so countries remain gray while most of the countries below turn green or red. The data also shows that few countries have large changes in happiness and those that do can be pinned on current events in the country. For example, Venezuela's happiness score drastically decreased from 2015 to 2017. This can be linked to the economic turmoil and protests currently happening in the country due to decline of oil prices that started in late 2014.

To explore the data more, select a country from the buttons below or hover over the line of a country in the Slopegraph. Countries can be unselected by clicking on their name again or clicking the "Reset" button. Multiple countries can be selected at the same time. The year 2016 can be filtered by clicking on the "2016" button below.
The slider can be adjusted to choose the change in happiness levels. The legend is interactable so line symbols in the legend can be clicked to show all corresponding countries that experienced the chosen increase or decrease in happiness.