{"id":185961,"date":"2025-12-15T15:35:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T15:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/185961\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T15:35:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T15:35:09","slug":"theres-a-happiness-gap-between-young-people-in-quebec-and-in-the-rest-of-canada-montreal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/185961\/","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a happiness gap between young people in Quebec and in the rest of Canada – Montreal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joshua Bujold, an upbeat psychology student in his first semester at Montreal\u2019s Dawson College, was taken aback to find out that happiness among young Canadians has plunged.<\/p>\n

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Outside Quebec, that is.<\/p>\n

Bujold\u2019s home province is an outlier among data showing \u00a0the happiness of Canadians under 30 has dropped so fast that they\u2019ve gone from being the country\u2019s happiest age group to its unhappiest in less than 15 years.<\/p>\n

That slide, depicted in the 2024 World Happiness Report, published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, was news to Bujold.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Quebec itself, I know a lot of people, and I think a lot \u2026 are really happy, especially the youth,\u201d said the 17-year-old.<\/p>\n

Researchers at the University of\u00a0Toronto, who authored a subsequent 2024 Canadian Happiness Report, said the slide in Quebec is less notable across a range of metrics.<\/p>\n

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Since 2014, they said, life evaluations among young people in Quebec have improved slightly in Gallup polling, while large declines in mental health are \u201cmuch weaker\u201d in Quebec, according to Statistics Canada data.<\/p>\n

The report says cultural and linguistic factors could potentially explain why young people in Quebec think they have it better.<\/p>\n

Maybe it comes down to a collective sense of pride that francophones share, said Bujold.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel pride is a very similar thing to happiness,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIn Montreal, I definitely see a lot less happiness than I do outside of Montreal, where a lot of francophones are,\u201d said Bujold, also a francophone.<\/p>\n

Can something like pride be quantified?<\/p>\n

Anthony McCanny, lead author on 2024 Canadian Happiness Report, said while it can\u2019t easily be proven, it appears cultural differences could be at play \u2014 especially when considering anglophones in Quebec tend to score closer to the national average when it comes to self-reported mental health.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a really important piece of information for us to start thinking about what is driving this difference between Quebec and the rest of Canada,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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The 2024 World Happiness Report found English-speaking Western nations are all witnessing a decline in the well-being of their under-30s. So it might be that young francophones are being exposed to a different social media landscape, McCanny said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis suggests that there is something special about the English sphere,\u201d McCanny said. \u201cPerhaps English youth culture, or English social media, is creating expectations of life that are hard to live up to.\u201d<\/p>\n

But McCanny said it\u2019s also possible that different living conditions in Quebec are a factor.<\/p>\n

John Helliwell, emeritus professor of economics at the University of British Columbia and a founding editor of the World Happiness report, also suggests francophone social media could be a factor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat difference between Quebec and the rest of Canada in the size of this drop is evidence in favour of saying it isn\u2019t just access to social media and internet use (making young Canadians less happy),\u201d said Helliwell, one of the world\u2019s leading experts on happiness.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s how it\u2019s used and what you hear and see on it, and what kind of linkages you get to others through it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jacques Forest is a psychologist and professor at UQAM, a French-language university in Montreal. He\u2019s taken a keen interest in the World Happiness Report for years, and isn\u2019t surprised to see that young Quebecers seem happier than other Canadians.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not me that says it, it\u2019s the data,\u201d he chuckled.<\/p>\n

The 2025 World Happiness Report, released in March, found that when Quebec was extracted from the rest of Canada, the province ranked sixth out of the 147 countries surveyed, while Canada at large was 18th among all age groups.<\/p>\n

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Countries like Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and the Netherlands, which ranked even higher, all have strong social safety nets, he said, just like Quebec.<\/p>\n

Quebec also has the lowest university tuition in North America.<\/p>\n

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And the province\u2019s affordable daycare system and the employment insurance it offers new parents sends the message that the government supports them, said Forest.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf people want to be happy, I think they should copy Quebec,\u201d said Forest, who teaches in the university\u2019s department of organization and human resources.<\/p>\n

As for whether it\u2019s Quebec\u2019s culture, the population\u2019s joie de vivre\u00a0might provide an explanation. Forest called it \u201ca far-fetched interpretation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that there\u2019s this Quebec effect, or this realization that what we have is precious and that we need to continue doing it,\u201d he said, adding it\u2019s marvellous that in a sea of English-speakers, so many in Quebec have maintained their francophone identity.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s more anecdotal than scientific, he said.<\/p>\n

Despite the apparent happiness gap, young people in Quebec have their share of problems.<\/p>\n

Close to 45 per cent of college students and just over 40 per cent of university students reported symptoms associated with an anxiety disorder, according to surveys in November of 2024 involving more than 32,000 students. Close to half of all college students surveyed and more than 42 per cent of university students disclosed symptoms of a depressive episode.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThose results are very concerning,\u201d said Julie Lane, a professor at the University of Sherbrooke\u2019s Department of Education, among those who led the research.<\/p>\n

The data also revealed those with English as their first language scored higher on self-reported symptoms of anxiety and depression, and that more described their mental health as poor.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the data show many view their mental health positively, Lane highlighted. Nearly 89 per cent described it as \u201cmoderate\u201d or \u201cflourishing\u201d \u2014 something that\u2019s very encouraging, she said.<\/p>\n

Jessica Proulx is in her second year at Universit\u00e9 du Quebec \u00e0 Montreal, where she\u2019s studying to become a high school teacher.<\/p>\n

She said the cost of living weighs heavily on her generation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have to work four jobs to make ends meet,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t have any family members who can help me, so I have to pay for everything myself: my studies, my housing, all of my basic needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pressure to excel academically is also a major source of anxiety, she said, and resources aren\u2019t always there to help students out, at least where she studies.<\/p>\n

But she said she finds ways to cope, ultimately describing herself as a happy person.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy anxiety is still very much there, of course. But I don\u2019t feel unhappy because of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joshua Bujold, an upbeat psychology student in his first semester at Montreal\u2019s Dawson College, was taken aback to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[245,242,10138,85,46,141],"class_list":{"0":"post-185961","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-happiness","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}