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ITALY EXPLAINED

Why are Italians ranked among the ‘unhappiest in Europe’?

Despite the romantic image portrayed of Italians living 'la dolce vita', one study has ranked the country as among the unhappiest in Europe. Here's the data behind the discontent.

Published: 23 March 2022 18:05 CET
Why are Italians ranked among the 'unhappiest in Europe'?
Italy hasn't ranked well in the happiness scale for Europe. (Photo by Tiziana FABI / AFP)

Italy’s population has placed among the least content in Europe, according to a new study by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

Happiness can be a woolly concept and hard to define, but the 2022 World Happiness Report has attempted to do that in a global survey of almost 150 countries.

Italy ranked 31st worldwide, faring well on a worldwide scale, but in Europe it lagged way behind some of its neighbours – who not only ranked highly in Europe but globally too. Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland took the four top spots globally.

In Europe, Italy also placed behind France, Germany, Austria, Ireland and slightly behind Spain and Romania.

Why were Italians ranked as being unhappy?

Based on scores over the period 2019-2021, the study took into account the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which may go some way to explaining Italy’s poor happiness index as it bore the brunt of the first waves of coronavirus infection in Europe in 2020.

Of course, there will be individual variations and happiness is difficult to scientifically define or measure.

Researchers used the following seven categories to assess each country’s happiness level:

  • Social support
  • Life expectancy
  • Freedom to make life choices
  • Generosity
  • GDP per capita
  • Perceptions of corruption
  • Positive and negative affects – dystopia (evaluating how much better life is in a given country in comparison to ones with bad living conditions).

“Our measurement of subjective well-being continues to rely on three main indicators: life evaluations, positive emotions, and negative emotions,” the report said.

“Happiness rankings are based on life evaluations as the more stable measure of the quality of people’s lives.”

Italy scored quite well in terms of its GDP, social support and healthy life expectancy, but respondents expressed a much lower value of freedom to make life choices compared to its European neighbours. Italians didn’t fare so well in dystopia either.

The report highlighted how Italy’s anxiety and sadness grew in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, based on social media analysis.

The Covid-19 pandemic could go some way to explaining Italy’s poor happiness ranking. (Photo by Tiziana FABI / AFP)

Five weeks after the outbreak of Covid, Italy showed the highest levels of anxiety globally. Levels of sadness grew too.

“On average, sadness reached its highest level three weeks after the outbreak, and remained stable for the following two weeks. The gradual increase of sadness terms occurred a while after stringency of social distancing measures increased, and remained high about two weeks later,” the report stated.

READ ALSO: Twelve statistics that show how the pandemic has hit Italy’s quality of life

Positive emotions also dropped in Italy as public health measures became stricter, the report noted.

However, throughout the turmoil, Italy ranked highly for supporting and taking care of each other – it was in fact the nationality least likely to simply take care of themselves.

Italy has consistently ranked poorly for perception of corruption: though there have been steady improvements over the past decade, it continues to rate as one of the most corrupt nations in Europe.

Despite the country’s overwhelmingly positive image abroad, Italy is in fact no stranger to poor rankings in various international comparisons on everything from corruption levels to English language proficiency.

You can find out more about those rankings below:

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MOVING TO ITALY

Readers recommend: Eight books you must read to understand Italy

After we published our own recommendations of some of the best books to read for those considering a move to Italy, The Local's readers weighed in with suggestions of your own.

Published: 25 April 2024 17:24 CEST
Readers recommend: Eight books you must read to understand Italy

In our previous guide to some of the best books to read before moving to Italy, we asked our readers to get in touch with your recommendations.

A number of you responded with your favourite reads about Italy; here’s what you suggested:

Ciao Bella – Six Take Italy

An anonymous reader describes this as “a delightful book about an Australian radio presenter who takes her husband and four children Bologna for a year which turns into two years (one being Covid).”

Kate Langbroek’s comic memoir “had me laughing and crying,” they write.

A Small Place in Italy

An apt choice for those considering their own rural Italian renovation project, Sam Cross recommends this book by British writer Eric Newby about buying, remodelling and moving into a cottage in the Tuscan countryside.

Cross also recommends Newby’s earlier work, ‘Love and War in the Appennines’, about his time as a British prisoner of war captured in Italy by the Germans in WWII.

READ ALSO: Eight of the best books to read before moving to Italy

Here, the author tells of his escape assisted by local partisans, “including a girl, Wanda, who became his future wife. A beautiful story,” says Cross.

The Italians

The Italians is written by veteran Italy correspondent John Hooper, who formerly wrote for the Guardian and is now the Economist’s Italy and Vatican reporter.

From politics to family traditions and the Mafia, the book tackles a range of aspects of Italian history and culture without getting lost in the weeds.

Simone in Rome describes it as “the best single volume on Italian customs and culture there is”.

READ ALSO: Nine things to expect if you move to rural Italy

Venice

It may be more than six decades old, but Jan Morris’s Venice is still considered one of the definitive English-language works on the lagoon city.

Book, Venice, library

A woman reads a book in Venice’s famous Acqua Alta library. Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Though a work of non-fiction, the book has been compared to Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited for its nostalgic, evocative tone.

“A personal view, beautifully written,” recommends reader Mary Austern.

Thin Paths

Described as a mix of travel book and memoir, Thin Paths is written by Julia Blackburn, who moved with her husband into a small house in the hills of Liguria in 1999.

Despite arriving with no Italian, over time she befriended her elderly neighbours, who took her into their confidence and shared stories of the village’s history under the control of a tyrannical landowner and the outbreak of World War II.

“Write it down for us,” they told her, “because otherwise it will all be lost.”

READ ALSO: Six things foreigners should expect if they live in Rome

In Other Words

If you’re currently learning Italian, consider Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words / In Altre Parole, which discusses the writer’s journey towards mastery of Italian through full immersion.

Reader Brett says, “The book is written in both Italian and English, presented on opposite pages, so it’s also a nice learning tool!”

Lahiri has since written Racconti Romani, or Roman Tales, a series of short stories set in and around Rome riffing off Alberto Moravia’s 1954 short story collection of the same name.

A Rosie Life in Italy

Ginger Hamilton says she would “highly recommend the ‘A Rosie Life in Italy’ series by Rosie Meleady.”

It’s “the delightfully written true story of an Irish couple’s move to Italy, purchase of a home, the process of rehabbing it, and their life near Lago di Trasimeno.”

The Dark Heart of Italy

Reader William describes The Dark Heart of Italy by Tobias Jones as an “excellent” book.

The product of a three-year journey across the Italy, Jones takes on the darker side of Italian culture, from organised crime to excessive bureaucracy.

Though it was published in 2003, Dark Heart stands the test of time: “twenty-odd years old but the essential truth of it hasn’t changed,” William writes.

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