Happiness surges in the USA on Inauguration Day, but declines in South Africa, Index reveals

Source: Pexels

“This rise in happiness could partly be attributed to the celebratory atmosphere among Trump’s supporters, who viewed the event as a realisation of their political aspirations.

"Furthermore, the key policy priorities announced by Trump likely also contributed to the increase. His promises to prioritise job creation, renegotiate trade deals to benefit American workers, and secure the nation’s borders resonated strongly with many individuals who felt economically or socially marginalised,” explained University of Johannesburg professor and wellbeing economist, Talita Greyling.

In South Africa, the GNH.today's index showed that happiness was not very sensitive to Trump’s inauguration and that the decrease in happiness since the weekend was more likely due to the Illegal Mining Tragedy that occurred at the Buffelsfontein Gold Mine near Stilfontein, where hundreds of illegal miners were trapped underground with at least 78 fatalities.

Global trade concerns

However, some of the negativity in the Happiness index might also be explained by Trump’s focus on "America First" policies and trade protectionism, which raised concerns among South Africans about potential impacts on global trade and the ripple effects on developing economies.

The GNH.today project measures happiness in near real-time based on specific emotion words used in Google searches. The project was initially launched in April 2019 by Greyling as well as by Stephanie Rossouw of Auckland University of Technology, and Afstereo - the technical partner for the GNH project, with an index based on data from social-media platform, X.

Since then, the GNH.today team has been developing an index exploring alternative big data sources. It found Google search data to be the most efficient predictor of happiness. It has presented the index at different global forums in Luxembourg, Kota Kinabalu (Malaysia), and France.