World Happiness Report 2022:

An Interactive Visualization

The World Happiness Report 2022 offers fascinating insights into the factors that contribute to happiness across nations. Leveraging this rich dataset, I created an interactive visualization to uncover patterns and correlations among happiness factors such as GDP per capita, social support, life expectancy, and more. This project merges data storytelling with user-centric interactivity to deliver an engaging and informative exploration of happiness worldwide.

Data

The dataset is sourced from the World Happiness Report 2022 (https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/ajaypalsinghlo/world-happiness-report-2022?select=World+Happiness+Report+2022.csv), It provides comprehensive metrics for 146 countries, detailing factors such as:

GDP per capita
Social support
Healthy life expectancy
Freedom to make life choices
Generosity
Perceptions of corruption

Flags for countries are sourced from the Circle Flags Gallery to enhance visual clarity. https://hatscripts.github.io/circle-flags/gallery

Project Objectives

This project aims to answer critical questions through visualization:

What is the correlation between GDP per capita and happiness scores?
How are happiness scores distributed geographically?
Which factors drive happiness in the top-ranking countries?
Can we identify outliers—countries with high happiness despite low perceptions of corruption?
How do happiness scores differ across continents?

Development Journey

Initial Sketches

The project began with conceptual sketches, envisioning multiple visualization components:

Interactive Map: Highlighting geographic trends and happiness scores across all countries.
Side Panels: Displaying the top and bottom 5 countries with detailed factor breakdowns.
Scatter Plots: Offering deeper insights into factor relationships.

Interactive Features

Dynamic Map

Circles represent countries, scaled and color-coded by happiness scores.
Hovering over a circle displays detailed data, including happiness score, GDP, and rank.

Side Panels

The left panel highlights the top 5 happiest countries, while the right panel features the bottom 5.
Each panel includes donut charts visualizing factor contributions like GDP, life expectancy, and social support.

Scatter Plots

Explore how happiness factors correlate with scores through an interactive tooltip featuring scatter plots for factors like GDP and life expectancy.

Interactive Legend

Filter countries by score ranges (e.g., >7.0, 6.0-7.0) using the legend. Highlighted countries dynamically adjust based on the selected range.

Key Insights

Happiest Countries: Finland, Denmark, and Iceland rank highest, driven by strong social support, high GDP, and life expectancy.
Least Happy Countries: Afghanistan and Zimbabwe score lowest, reflecting economic challenges and limited social infrastructure.
Geographic Trends: Northern Europe consistently outperforms other regions, while parts of Africa and the Middle East show lower scores.
Factor Analysis: GDP, life expectancy, and social support emerge as the strongest predictors of happiness in top-ranking nations.