Found a new psychology blog, the Happiness blog, that featured some work by Adrian White of the University of Leicester. White and his colleagues ranked nations according to happiness, which in turn appeared largely determined by the highly correlated variables of health, wealth, and educational opportunities.

How did your country do in the rankings?

Here are the top 20:

1. Denmark
2. Switzerland
3. Austria
4. Iceland
5. The Bahamas
6. Finland
7. Sweden
8. Bhutan
9. Brunei
10. Canada
11. Ireland
12. Luxembourg
13. Costa Rica
14. Malta
15. The Netherlands
16. Antigua and Barbuda
17. Malaysia
18. New Zealand
19. Norway
20. The Seychelles

Where is the US in all of this? We’re only #23. Here are some other interesting ranks:

35. Germany
41. UK
62. France
82. China
90. Japan
125. India
167. Russia

Bringing up the end of the list are:

176. Democratic Republic of the Congo
177. Zimbabwe
178. Burundi

You can read the whole article here.


1 Comment

PsychBLOG.co.uk » PSYlent: 29th July 2007 · July 29, 2007 at 2:36 am

[…] The happiest place in the world is … The search for happiness is not a new quest – and it seems that it could be as easy as moving to another country.  The happiest country in the world is Denmark, with the UK coming a depressing 41st.  For the full happy picture see Laura’s blog. […]

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