The World's Happiest Countries - see if your country is happy

Denmark has retaken the title of "world's happiest country," knocking Switzerland into second place, Iceland in 3rd, Norway in 4th, Finland in 5th place and Canada in 6th place.

Denmark and Switzerland were closely followed by Iceland, Norway and Switzerland, according to the World Happiness Report Update 2016, released Wednesday in Rome by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network for the United Nations.

 

Denmark won the title three of the four times the report has been issued, losing to Switzerland only once.

 

Nigeria is in 103 position of happy country. People in Burundi are the least satisfied with their lives, according to the survey of 156 countries, but residents of Benin (153rd place), Afghanistan (154), Togo (155) and Syria (156) aren't doing much better.

 

The United States ranked 13th in overall happiness, lagging behind Canada (6), the Netherlands (7), New Zealand (8), Australia (9), Sweden (10), Israel (11) and Austria (12). Germany came in 16th place, while other superpowers -- the United Kingdom (23), Japan (53), Russia (56) and China (83) -- were markedly lower.

Some countries that saw drops suffered economic and political turmoil -- including Greece, Italy and Spain -- while Ukraine's political trouble and violence likely caused a significant drop in happiness there.

 

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.

 

 

It turns out that people are also happier in countries where there's less inequality of well-being, the report found. And happiness inequality has increased significantly "in most countries and regions of the world," said Helliwell, comparing 2012-15 data with 2005-11 data.

 

The country of Bhutan, a tiny country famous for measuring the "Gross National Happiness" of its people, ranked No. 1 in happiness equality, followed by Comoros and the Netherlands. South Sudan, Sierra Leone and Liberia had the highest happiness inequality.