Wednesday, February 07, 2007

The Happy Factor

This is kind of interesting... A psychologist from Britain's University of Leicester produced the first ever "world map of happiness," which shows Denmark as the happiest country, with the United States doing relatively well at 23 out of 178 countries. Adrian White, an analytic social psychologist at the University's School of Psychology, analyzed figures published by UNESCO, the CIA, the New Economics Foundation, WHO, the Veenhoven Database, the Latinbarometer, the Afrobarometer, and the UNHDR to create a global projection of subjective well-being. The "map" will be published in a psychology journal this September and presented at a conference later in the year, Science Daily online reported Wednesday, based on a University of Leicester press release. The meta-analysis is drawn from the findings of over 100 different studies around the world that questioned 80,000 people worldwide about their satisfaction with life. Data concerning health, wealth and access to education was also analyzed. The 20 happiest nations in the World are: 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 Other notable results include: 23. USA 35. Germany 41. UK 62. France 82. China 90. Japan 125. India 167. Russia The three least happy countries were: 176. Democratic Republic of the Congo 177. Zimbabwe 178. Burundi Here's the rest of the article and the map... World_Happiness_Map World_Happiness_Article

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Most interesting, Colin. I'll have to go to the article and see what the questions were that they asked in light of Baha'u'llah's writings on "contentment".

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Mom