Denmark has once again come out on top of the world’s happiest country list, with fellow Scandinavian nations Finland and Norway claiming second and third place respectively.
The 2013 World Happiness Report, which was recently published by Columbia University’s Earth Institute for the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, showed that Denmark was the world’s happiest country, followed by Finland, Norway and the Netherlands.
The report ranks more than 150 nations based on a ‘life evaluation’ score that considers factors including wealth, political freedom, job security and government corruption. It uses sources such as the European Social Survey, the World Values Survey, the Gallup World Poll and the European Values Survey.
Denmark was also named the happiest country in 2012 after gaining the highest combined score on the 0-10 scale. This year the country at the bottom of the list, Togo in West Africa, got a score of 2.936, while Denmark scored an impressive 7.693.
The report showed that happiness leads to people living longer, having higher earnings, having more productive lives and being ‘better’ citizens.
Denmark has been consistently among the world’s happiest countries since the early 1970s. In 2011, it also came out on top of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s OECD list for happiest country, while a Green Growth Leaders study showed that the Danish capital Copenhagen’s efforts to keep the city green have led to the quality of life in the city improving.
[…] Rankings are out […]