Despite the Cote d’Azur, the Alps, Champagne and some of the greatest food in the world, the French are not happy. Ask them to rate their lives on a 0-10 scale between the worst and best imaginable existence, and—the World Happiness Report finds—they lag not only the world-beating Scandinavians, but also the unequal Anglo-Saxons, and even poorer countries like Guatemala.
The French are reliably convinced their country is headed the wrong way, and politicians like Emmanuel Macron and François Hollande fall from popularity with remarkable speed. Anti-depressant use is high by European standards, and while it’s tricky to compare differing sets of data, suicide appears to be high too.
What’s more, according to Claudia Senik, an economist at the Sorbonne, the misery is particular to people born and raised in France; its immigrants are less gloomy. Long lives, long holidays and long lunches are not, it seems, enough to shrug off that old cliché—the “Gallic shrug.”
On paper, the French should be happier...
...yet French people are more likely to believe their country is heading in the wrong direction
The French are above the European average for antidepressant use
And French suicide rates are higher than the UK's
