Canada ranks 7th in the United Nation’s “Happiness” ranking. And while it’s great to be in the top 10, we are slipping.
In 2013 we were ranked 6th. The United States, however, dropped in the ranking to 18th place from 14th last year, and has never made it into the top 10.
The report, published yesterday, ranked 156 countries based on factors such as life expectancy, social support and corruption.
“All the top countries tend to have high values for all six of the key variables that have been found to support well-being: income, healthy life, expectancy, social support, freedom, trust and generosity,” the report states.
The happiness index is also closely linked to how immigrants in a country feel. The report explains that countries with the happiest immigrants aren’t the necessarily more wealthy, but they tend to offer a balanced lifestyle and social services.
Canada remains in good company, however, with Finland is in first-place,
And Finland is number one in immigrant happiness. The nordic country has about 300,000 foreigners and residents with foreign roots, in a population of 5.5 million people.
John Helliwell, a professor emeritus of economics at the University of British Columbia, is co-editor of the World Happiness Report .
He said locally-born residents’ and foreigners’ happiness is closely related.
“The most striking finding of the report is the remarkable consistency between the happiness of immigrants and the locally born,” Helliwell said.
“Those who move to happier countries gain, while those who move to less happy countries lose.”
The countries lowest on the happiness scale include those where there is political unrest, violence or economic uncertainty.
Burudi ranked lowest, with Central Africa Republic, South Sudan, Tanzania and Yemen rounding out the bottom five.
These are the top 20:
1. Finland
2. Norway
3. Denmark
4. Iceland
5. Switzerland
6. Netherlands
7. Canada
8. New Zealand
9. Sweden
10. Australia
11. Israel
12. Austria
13. Costa Rica
14. Ireland
15. Germany
16. Belgium
17. Luxembourg
18. United States
19. United Kingdom
20. United Arab Emirates
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