Switzerland
has knocked Denmark off its perch as the happiest country in the world. That's
according to the 2015 World Happiness Report, which seeks to quantify happiness
as a means of influencing governmental policy.
Deutsche Welle, 24 April 2015
The third
annual World Happiness Report put Switzerland at the top of the list, followed
closely by Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Canada. Finland, the Netherlands,
Sweden, New Zealand and Australia rounded out the top 10 for 2015.
Germany was placed 26th of the 160 countries studied, not far behind Britain, which placed
21st, and the United States, which did a little better at 15th.
Among the
lowest on the list were war-torn Syria and Afghanistan, which were among the
bottom 10, along with eight sub-Saharan African countries.
The
rankings were based on a number of factors, including real gross domestic
product per capita, healthy life expectancy, social support systems and the
perceived degree of corruption or lack thereof in government.
Jeffrey
Sachs of Columbia University in the United States, which led the study on
behalf of the United Nations, told a press conference in New York on Thursday
that the top 13 countries were the same as in last year's report, although
their order had shifted.
Sachs, who
was one of the authors of the report, said the winning formula for all 13 was
relative affluence combined with strong social support networks and relatively
accountable systems of government.
"Countries
below that top group fall short, either in income or in social support or in
both," he said.
Sachs said
the report would be widely distributed at the United Nations and that he
expected that it would be carefully read by governments all over the world.
"We
want this to have an impact, to put it straightforwardly, on the deliberations
on sustainable development because we think this really matters," he said.
'Networks
that connect people'
Another
co-author of the report, John Helliwell of the University of British Columbia,
told the CBC, Canada's public broadcaster, that although affluence played a
major role in happiness, "the importance of social factors and the norms
and networks that connect people" was a theme that cut through all levels
of income.
This, he
said, included "everything from the degree of trust and collaboration in
the workplace to time spent with family and friends, for example."
The other
co-author, Richard Layard from the London School of Economics, stressed the
importance of an individual's childhood to how happy they could be expected to
be in their adult lives.
"We
must invest early on in the lives of our children so that they grow to become
independent, productive and happy adults, contributing both socially and
economically," he said.
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