Canadians are increasingly unhappy, recent data from Statistics Canada says.
Last week, Statistics Canada released the latest numbers from its survey of Canadians’ quality of life. The agency asked Canadians about how satisfied they are with their lives, their financial well-being and outlook for the future.
The results are bleak.
Fewer than half of Canadians — 49 per cent — said they were satisfied with their lives during the first three months of 2024. In the summer of 2021, when Statistics Canada first conducted this survey, 54 per cent of Canadians reported a high level of life satisfaction.
Social psychologists say personal happiness impacts society.
“Happiness isn’t just an outcome of positive life circumstances and events, it’s also a predictor of them,” said Lara Aknin, a social psychology professor at Simon Fraser University.
“Countries that have citizens that are happier and better off are also the countries that have more civically engaged citizens, that have healthier citizens, that have stronger social fabrics,” she said.
Canadians are also less hopeful for the future. Sixty per cent reported being hopeful for the future, down from 65 per cent in the summer of 2021.
The Statistics Canada report says older Canadians are more satisfied with their lives than younger Canadians, and that financially secure Canadians are more likely to have a positive outlook on life. Social psychologists say these results are not surprising, but the relationship between financial security and well-being is not as simple as the data suggests.
Just because someone has more money, does not necessarily mean they are happier, says Frederick Grouzet, a psychology professor at the University of Victoria.
Older adults — those 65 and older — have had stable life satisfaction since the study began, with more than 60 per cent reporting high life satisfaction in both periods.
Older adults often have greater financial security and social connections than younger adults, says Ankin. Many seniors own homes and generally do not have as many concerns about housing security as younger people.
Nearly 60 per cent of people who said they could meet their basic needs — like housing, food, clothing and transportation — said they were highly satisfied with their life. But only 29 per cent of people who had difficulty meeting their needs reported being satisfied.
If people have enough to meet their needs, they do not necessarily see an increase in happiness with more income. “Money won’t buy your well-being beyond meeting your basic psychological needs,” Grouzet said. “There is a relationship, but it’s not absolute.”
“At the low end, more money buys a lot more happiness,” said Ankin. “After a certain point, it starts to flatten.”
Young people
Since 2021, life satisfaction among Canadians aged 25 to 34 has dropped steadily. In the first months of 2024, 37 per cent of these Canadians said they were highly satisfied with their lives, down from 47 per cent in the summer of 2021.
Canada is not the only country where young people report lower levels of happiness than older people, says Ankin, who is also editor of the World Happiness Report, an annual report that ranks countries’ happiness levels. This pattern also exists in the US, Australia and New Zealand.
Young people today are less happy than young people were even 10 or 15 years ago, she says. A key reason may be that they are less satisfied with their social connections — even though they have similar numbers of friends as their contemporaries had a decade ago.
“They’re less satisfied with their levels of social contact and connection than they used to be,” says Ankin.
Increased political polarization, the ubiquity of social media and remote work might be contributing to their unhappiness, she says.
Young people have “a lot of pressure on them,” said Grouzet.
“Young people are much more connected to their environment,” he said. They are increasingly aware of global conflicts, political uncertainty and climate change — and all of this can add to their anxiety, he says.
Social connections are key to well-being. The report says that people who report experiencing discrimination are less likely to report high life satisfaction or hope for the future. Racialized Canadians, Canadians with disabilities and LGBTQ Canadians were more likely to report lower levels of life satisfaction.
One way to increase personal happiness is to help others, says Grouzet.
“When we do care about others, we also benefit,” he said. “[A] good way to have higher well-being, is when we ensure that everyone has a high well-being.”
Virtual friends do not help. They need to interact with real people.