Israel was again ranked the 11th happiest country in the world in 2016, according to the annual World Happiness Report.
Israel was the 11th happiest country in the world in 2017, the fourth consecutive year Israel received this high ranking, after reaching 14th in the first 2012 report.
According to the World Happiness Report, Israel beat the US, UK, and France, ranked 14th, 19th, and 31st respectively.
The report’s top 10 happiest countries this year are Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Finland, Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Sweden.
The report’s 10 least happy countries include: Haiti, Yemen, South Sudan, Liberia, Guinea, Togo, Rwanda, Syria, Tanzania, Burundi and the Central African Republic.
The World Happiness Report is a survey of 155 countries about the state of global happiness. This year’s report was released Monday in Rome in advance of March 20th, the UN’s World Happiness Day. The happiness scale measures factors including: gross domestic product per person, life expectancy, freedom of choice, generosity, perceptions of corruption, and social support.
The Sustainable Development Solutions Network publishes the report, an initiative of the United Nations launched in 2012 to promote sustainable development on local, national, and global scales.
Leading experts across fields – economics, psychology, survey analysis, national statistics, health, public policy and more – describe how measurements of well-being can be effectively used to assess national progress.
“The reports review the state of happiness in the world today and show how the new science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness. They reflect a new worldwide demand for more attention to happiness as a criteria for government policy,” the report states.
“It’s the human things that matter. If the riches make it harder to have frequent and trustworthy relationships between people, is it worth it?” asks John Helliwell, lead report author and economist at the University of British Columbia in Canada (ranked 7th). “The material can stand in the way of the human.”
By: United with Israel Staff
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