After interviews conducted in 156 countries they concluded that the happiest countries are: Denmark, Switzerland, and Iceland. Least happy? Afghanistan, Syria and Togo. http://worldhappiness.report/. (The United States was #13, Canada 6, and Mexico # 21.) See the complete list (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report)
We aren’t talking about happiness in terms of laughter, which have the most comedians per capita or whose people create the best jokes. Rather the report looks at serious issues of daily life of the residents in 156 countries around the globe.
Katia Hetter writing for CNN Travel states
that the reports authors consider “Happiness is a better measure of human
welfare than measuring education, health, poverty, income and good government
separately, the report's editors argue.” There are at least seven key ingredients of
happiness: People who live in the happiest countries have longer life
expectancies, have more social support, have
more freedom to make life choices, have
lower perceptions of corruption, experience more generosity, experience
less inequality of happiness and have a
higher gross domestic product per capita, the report shows. (italics added)
While the article appeared on the travel
site, suggesting perhaps that one might prefer to travel to a happier country,
the subject has more serious implications.
According
to World Happiness Report website “Leading
experts across fields – economics, psychology, survey analysis, national
statistics, health, public policy and more – describe how measurements of
well-being can be used effectively to assess the progress of nations”. In 2017 a new more detailed report will be issued. Let’s see which countries are Happiest and which ones have moved up or down in the ranking, and how they are seen overall as countries to visit, as business partners, and contributors to the well being of the world.
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