Happiness Around the World

The World’s Happiest CounItries

The University of Michigan's World Values Survey (WVS) has compiled data on the happiest countries in the world for over twenty years. Their results are considered very authoritative by happiness researchers. Their study of over 65 countries, conducted from 1999-2001, provided two different rankings. The first ranking is based on the question “How happy are you?” While the second ranking is based on 2 questions “How happy are you?” and “How satisfied are you with your life?” These two different ways of measuring happiness have led to some happiness researchers arguing which countries are indeed the happiest. For some researches, this study confirms that money cannot buy happiness..

The World Map of Happiness

Adrian White, Analytic Social Psychologist at the University of Leicester, produced the first ever “world map of happiness” based on his analysis of statistical data (published by UNESCO, the CIA, the New Economics Foundation, the World Health Organization, the World Database of Happiness, the Latinbarometer, the Afrobarometer, and the UNHDR) combined with responses of 80’000 people worldwide. He has found happiness to be most closely associated with health, followed by wealth and then education. By showing a correlation between wealth and happiness, his study contradicts the research findings on the Happy Planet Index and the World Values Survey .