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International Internet Magazine. Baltic States news & analytics Thursday, 28.03.2024, 20:11

Switzerland tops global ''happy'' index

BC, Riga, 24.04.2015.Print version
Switzerland is the happiest country in the world, closely followed by Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Canada, according to a global ranking of happiness unveiled in New York on Thursday, reports LETA/AFP.

The 2015 ''World Happiness Report'' is the third annual report seeking to quantify happiness as a means of influencing government policy. The United Nations published the first study in 2012.

 

Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia round out the top 10, making small or medium-sized countries in Western Europe seven of the top 10 happiest countries.

 

Latvia is ranked 89th in the report, considerably behind Estonia and Lithuania, who are ranked 73rd and 56th, respectively.



 

The United States is in 15th place, behind Israel and Mexico, with Britain at 21. France ranks number 29, behind Germany in 26th place. Russia was in 64th place in the report.

 

Afghanistan and war-torn Syria joined eight sub-Saharan countries in Africa – Togo, Burundi, Benin, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Chad – as the 10 least happy of 158 countries.

 

Belarus is 59th, Poland is 60th, Russia – 64th.

 

The survey was produced based on Gallup World Poll data taking into account such indicators as real GDP per capita, average longevity, corruption level and social freedoms.

 

The SDSN consists of global academic professionals, government and private sector representatives. The first World Happiness Report was published in 2012.

 

When it turns to consider life evaluation changes for 125 countries between 2005-2007 and 2012-2014, there are seen lots of evidence of movement, including 53 significant gainers  and 41 significant losers. Gainers especially outnumber losers in Latin America, the Commonwealth of Independent States (former Soviet states) and Central and Eastern Europe (CIS/CEE). Losers outnumber gainers in Western Europe and to a lesser extent in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

 

Changes in the six key variables explain a significant proportion of these changes, although the magnitude and natures of the crises facing nations since 2005 has been such as to move countries beyond the range of recent past experience, and into poorly charted waters. In particular, we found further evidence that major crises have the potential to alter life evaluations in quite different ways according to the quality of the social and institutional infrastructure. In particular, as analyzed first in the World Happiness Report 2013, the evidence was found that a crisis imposed on a weak institutional structure can actually, further damage the quality of the supporting social fabric if the crisis triggers blame and strife rather than cooperation and repair. On the other hand, we found evidence that economic crises and natural disasters can, if the underlying institutions and fabric are of sufficient quality, lead to improvements rather than damage to the social fabric. These improvements not only ensure better responses to the crisis, but also have substantial additional happiness returns, since people place real value on feeling that they belong to a caring and effective community.






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