World’s Happiest Nations

Denmark remains on Top. India is 118th, US slips to 13th position, China is 83rd.
Denmark has retained its topmost position in the “World’s Happiest country” list ranked by the World Happiness Report 2016. It is followed by Switzerland, Iceland and Norway. Finland, Canada and the Netherlands are 5th, 6th and 7th in the list. The next three places go to New Zealand, Australia and Sweden. India stands at 118th position.
The ranking is done by the Sustainable Development Solution Network and was launched at a three-day conference at the Bank of Italy. This year, for the first time, the World Happiness Report gives a special role to the measurement and consequences of inequality in the distribution of well-being among countries and regions. In previous reports, the editors have argued that happiness provides a better indicator of human welfare than do income, poverty, education, health and good government measured separately. In a parallel way, they now argue that the inequality of well-being provides a broader measure of inequality. They find that people are happier living in societies where there is less inequality of happiness. They also find that happiness inequality has increased significantly (comparing 2012-2015 to 2005-2011) in most countries, in almost all global regions, and for the population of the world as a whole.
Some of the other countries stand on United States of America 13th, Israel 11th, Germany 16, Singapore 22, United Kingdom 23, United Arab Emirates 28, France, 32, Saudi Arabia 34, Kuwait 41, Bahrain 42, Malaysia 47, Japan 51. Russia 56, Libya 67, Turkey 78, Indonesia 79, Jordan 80, China 83, Morocco 90, Pakistan 92, Lebanon 93, Egypt 120, Sudan 133, and war ravaged Afghanistan and Syria are on 154 and 156th position respectively. Burundi is the least happy country standing on 157th position.
Iindicators used for the ranking are: 1- GDP per capita (per capita income); 2- Life expectancy; 3- Social support (with someone to bank upon in times of trouble); 4- Freedom to make life choices; 5- Generosity (based on the question “Have you donated money last months?”); Perception of corruption; etc.
While the top ten countries scored over 7.4 (on a scale of 10 being the happiest to 1 being the unhappiest), the last 10 scored less than 3.5. Of the last 10 countries, eight were from sub-Saharan Africa. The other two were war-torn Afghanistan and Syria.
The report is written by John F. Heliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey D. Sachs. This is the fourth World happiness Report.