It is not easy to measure the level happiness of a person, not to mention the happiness of a whole nation, but the World Happiness Report has done just that. The report, commissioned by the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), concludes that in 2016, Denmark, Switzerland and Iceland were the happiest countries in the world.

Top 10 happiest nations in 2016:

1. Denmark (7.526)
2. Switzerland (7.509)
3. Iceland (7.501)
4. Norway (7.498)
5. Finland (7.413)
6. Canada (7.404)
7. Netherlands (7.339)
8. New Zealand (7.334)
9. Australia (7.313)
10. Sweden (7.291)

The figure after each country is an index composed of six factors that make up the ranking system for the World Happiness Report. The six factors are:

– GDP per capita
– Healthy years of life expectancy
– Social support (as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble)
– Trust (as measured by a perceived absence of corruption in government and business)
– Perceived freedom to make life decisions
– Generosity (as measured by recent donations).

Top 40 countries ranked by the happiness index in 2016:

The whole report is available here.

The report concludes that is not about the money alone, but equal distribution of well-being:
“We have argued that just as subjective well-being provides a broader and more inclusive measure of the quality of life than does income, then so should the inequality of subjective well-being provide a more inclusive and meaningful measure of the distribution of well-being among individuals within a society. There is every hope that simply changing the focus from income inequality to well-being inequality will speed the arrival of a time when the distribution of well-being can be improved, for the benefit of current and future generations in all countries.”