Earlier this month, the United Nations Sustainable Development Network released their latest World Happiness Report, which listed how happy a country's citzens were.
According to the report, the United States ranked 17th on the list, bested by Mexico, Panama, Israel and Canada. European nations like Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden were ranked among the world's happiest countries, according to the survey.
U.N. officials said that purpose of the report -- in part -- is to encourage policymakers in using well-being and happiness as a goal to establish policy. One of the report’s authors, John Helliwell, said that is beginning to happen slowly.
“There are several countries that have made explicit efforts in this direction. The United Arab Emmirates being one, France being another, but also United Kingdom and South Korea have also changed the way it approaches policies,” said Helliwell, a senior fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and co-director of their program on "Social Interactions, Identity and Well-Being."
According to Helliwell, there were six factors used to measure happiness: gross domestic product per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, generosity, perceived absence of corruption in business and government and a sense of freedom on key life choices.
The major differences between Denmark and the United States were in the last two factors, where Denmark ranked very high and the United States ranked very low.
“The whole idea of distance between top and bottom, of the bosses and workers, or the principals and the students is very flat and that’s the kind of environment where everyone feels that doors are open to them and no one is stopping them from getting along,” said Helliwell.
