Why are Aussies so happy?

I anticipated that my first several weeks over here would be kind of tough due to the typical culture shock that many people go through when staying in a foreign country for an extended period of time. I haven't had the least bit of culture shock or real homesickness yet and I think it is because the Australian people are so nice and the culture is so much life America's. Much more so than Europe, you can walk down the street in Sydney and you might not even know you are in a foreign country. There is a Subway, McDonalds, 7-11 on every corner. Every song you hear on the radio is American, every show on TV is American or at least an Australian version of an American show such as "Celebrity Apprentice: Australia."

I would say the culture is different in one distinct way: everyone here is nice. That's not to say that most people aren't nice in the US, but here literally everyone is nice. It's almost strange. Everyone from hotel receptionists, to cafe workers, to people you meet on the street, to bus drivers are cheerful and extremely helpful when you interact with them. I don't know what they are putting in the water down here, but it has made my transition from leaving the States and traveling by myself much easier.

I've looked more into the issue, and I think part of the reason everyone seems happy down here is that they have every reason to be. If you look at the statistics, Australia has an incredibly low rate of unemployment compared to the US and Europe. Australia: 5% unemployed, US: 9%, Europe: 9.5%. At my work program orientation the program leader put it this way, "young Australians don't worry about getting jobs, they know at any minute they can get a job and get paid well."

Consequently, Australia is an extremely wealthy country, with a GDP per capita income of $56,000. That is higher than countries such as the USA, Canada, Japan, France, England and Germany. In fact, it ranks 7th highest in the world only to: 1) Luxembourg, 2) Norway, 3) Qatar, 4) Switzerland, 5) United Arab Emirates and 6) Denmark.

There is a statistic called the "Human Development Index" which, and I'll quote Wikipedia on this, "is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education and standards of living for countries worldwide." Australia ranks second in this index, only to Norway, with New Zealand coming in third.

You combine all of these factors, low unemployment, high median household income, high life expectancy, a well educated society and couple it with great weather and an extremely peaceful society and it seems that it's members should be cheerful all of the time.

I've watched a ton of local news since I have been here and I have heard very little news about crime. The most gory story I've heard is a woman accidentally getting hit by a train in Melbourne. A notable story was 3 teenagers being caught by police after beating up a cab driver in Melbourne. The cab driver suffered only minor injuries and it made news in Sydney, which is 10 hours away from Melbourne by car. That would be like there being a headline in the Dallas Morning News: "3 St. Louis teenagers caught after giving cab driver minor bruises." In reality, for a STL headline to make a Dallas paper it would probably have to be something along the lines of "East St. Louis gang shootout leaves 17 dead, 13 wounded."

To be fair to the US, we have about 285 million more people than Australia, so that probably has something to do with it. But that could also be a possible cause of Australia's low crime rate, they have such a small population that it might make them feel more of a bond with one another.

To put Australia's population into perspective, land wise the country is slightly larger than the continental US, but has a population smaller than the state of Texas. Unfortunately, much of the country is Outback and virtually uninhabitable, but you get the point.