Looking for the happiest place on earth? Pack up and move to Denmark.
According to World Happiness Report published by The Earth Institute at Columbia University and commissioned for a United Nations conference on happiness, Denmark is the happiest country in the world followed by Finland, Norway and the Netherlands.
The 158-page report, the first of its kind ever, ranks countries on a “life evaluation score” that takes into account a variety of factors such as wealth, government corruption, political freedom and job security. The sources include the Gallup World Poll (GWP), the World Values Survey (WVS), the European Values Survey (EVS), and the European Social Survey (ESS).
- It is no accident that the happiest countries in the world tend to be high-income countries that also have a high degree of social equality, trust and quality of government, write the authors of the study in the introduction.
The report sparked an enthusiastic comment from a blogger in the British newspaper the Guardian. Among other things, the blogger commends Denmark for having a great childcare and healthcare system.
- Since moving from Finsbury Park in London to Copenhagen three years ago with my husband Duncan, our quality of life has skyrocketed, writes Cathy Strongman in her blog post in the Guardian under the headline ‘Copenhagen really is wonderful, for so many reasons’.
Read the full report here.