In a recent survey sponsored by National Science Foundation, led by Ronald Inglehart, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, Denmark came out as the happiest country in the world.
Forty-two to 57 countries were surveyed, and there’s no information if Philippines was amongst those. While 350,000 respondents participated in the survey, and we can’t tell if there’s any Filipino immigrant amongst them. There is a strong correlation between happiness and democracy, social inequality and peacefulness. Puerto Rico and Colombia also rank highly, along with Northern Ireland, Iceland, Switzerland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Canada and Sweden.
According to Inglehart, ultimately, the most important determinant of happiness is the extent to which people have free choice in how to live their lives.
Anyhow, the most important realization here is: the richest country will not necessarily be the happiest. Parallel to life’s reality that money can’t buy happiness.
The survey which is being conducted since 1981 kept two simple questions to arrive with this conclusion, which are (a) Taking all things together, would you say you are very happy, rather happy, not very happy, not at all happy? (b) All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?
Hmmm, I’m thinking about my could have been answers if I were one of the respondents. What’s yours?
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
liptreatment 07.04.08 at 10:18 pm
Do you have the complete list? I wanna see where Australia is…
witsandnuts 07.05.08 at 12:03 pm
They haven’t published yet the complete list. As of 2002, Australia is in the 16th place. http://thehappinessshow.com/HappiestCountries.htm