Countries with more pet cats per person tend to report higher happiness, according to a study of 93 nations published in PLOS One. The same study found the opposite pattern for Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite spread mainly through cat feces and undercooked meat that infects as many as 1 in 3 people worldwide: nations with higher infection rates reported lower happiness. The researchers are careful to say the link is a correlation, not proof that cats themselves are making anyone happier
The paper, led by biologist Javier Borráz-León of Mexico’s National Institute of Psychiatry along with coauthors from Finland and Latvia, compared national happiness scores against cat ownership rates, Toxoplasma infection rates, wealth and health spending across the 93 countries. Cat density varied enormously from one nation to the next, ranging from roughly 67 to more than 3,200 cats per 10,000 residents, with an average of about 990. When the researchers combined cat density, national wealth, health spending and infection measures into a single model, those factors together accounted for 47 percent of the variation in happiness between countries, according to the study
Even the researchers behind the finding pointed out that national income and GDP per capita correlated with happiness more strongly than cat ownership did. Once wealth was stripped out of the model, cat density and recent To