Israel once again was ranked in the upper echelons of the U.N.’s “World Happiness Report,” revealing a key ingredient in the Startup Nation’s recipe for success.
By United with Israel Staff
Israel was named the 14th happiest country in the world in an annual ranking by the United Nations as part of its “World Happiness Report.”
Tel Aviv also earned top honors, notching an 8th place finish on the happiest city in the world list.
The U.N.’s rankings reflect polls gauging the attitudes of 153 nations’ residents, including breakdowns based on life expectancy, economic metrics, and key social indicators.
“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 stated in 2017.
According to a 2019 Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) report, life expectancy in Israel is 84.8 years for women and 80.9 years for men, which is significantly higher than global life expectancy (74.2 years for women and 69.8 for men), according to World Health Organization figures.
While the U.N. happiness rankings don’t make any direct correlations between feelings of emotional well-being and the proliferation of innovative startups, Israel is home to a disproportionately large percentage of the world’s innovative new tech companies.
According to CBS statistics there were 1,869 startups in the Tel Aviv area in 2019, with another 1,300 startups in Israel’s central region, Globes reported.
“Tel Aviv contains more startups per capita than any city in the world other than Silicon Valley, according to the 2019 Global Startup Ecosystem Report published by Startup Genome and the Global Entrepreneurship Network,” reported IEEE Spectrum, a top magazine in the field of engineering and applied sciences.
Prior to 2019, “Tel Aviv contained the most startups per capita, even beating Silicon Valley. With companies including Google, Nielsen, and Nvidia operating incubators, accelerators, and competitions around Israel, some are even calling Tel Aviv the next Silicon Valley.”
Could joy be the secret ingredient driving Israel’s race to the top of the startup world?
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