London - People in Britain are less happy than those in Australia, New Zealand or the US, but more contented than their peers in Germany, France and Spain, the 2015 World Happiness Report has found.
According to the new study, which examined factors including economics, psychology, health and public policy in 158 countries, Switzerland is officially the happiest country on Earth, followed by Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Canada.
South Africa came 113th on the list.
Britain lagged behind in 21st place, up one place from last year's survey. New Zealand at No 9, Australia 10, the United States 15, Germany 26, France 29, and Spain at 36.
First published in 2012, the World Happiness Report is an initiative of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Solutions Network, which ranks countries in terms of their population's wellbeing and reflects the recent global interest in happiness as criteria for informing government policy.
“A rapidly increasing number of national and local governments are using happiness research in their search for policies that could enable people to live better lives,” the report says. “Increasingly happiness is considered a proper measure of social progress and goal of public policy.”
The report focuses on people's evaluations of their lives and includes wealth (GDP per capita), social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom (“Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?”), generosity (“Have you donated money to a charity in the past month?”), and government corruption.
“There is no single key to happiness,” US economist Jeffrey Sachs, who led the team behind the World Happiness Report, explained. “Being rich? That's good, but it's only a modest part of the story. Trusting society, having a government that ranks low in corruption, a society where people are generous and volunteering - all of these are important for happiness.”
A full breakdown of the 2015 World Happiness Report can be found at http://worldhappiness.report/
The Independent on Sunday