Washington - Happiness seems to be most abundant a long way from the equator. At least according to the new World Happiness Report 2015. The 10 happiest countries are Switzerland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Canada, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia.
Except for war-torn Syria and Afghanistan, the 10 unhappiest countries are all in Saharan or sub-Saharan Africa.
Then again, you don’t have to be shivering to be happy. Israel and Costa Rica are the 11th and 12th happiest countries. As for those at the bottom, their unhappiness probably has a lot more to do with poverty and violence than with proximity to the zero latitude line.
South Africa is the 113th happiest country of the 158 covered by the survey, which obtained its data primarily from the Gallup World Poll. That puts the South Africa behind 11 African countries, including Libya (63), Mauritius (71), Nigeria (78), Mozambique (94), Lesotho (97) and Swaziland (101).
The World Happiness Report grew out of a project from Bhutan, a Buddhist kingdom of 700 000 people in the eastern Himalayas whose Prime Minister, Jigmi Y Thinley, set out to measure gross national happiness.
Thinley got the UN to adopt a 2011 resolution inviting member nations to measure their happiness as a guide to improving public policies. This is the third World Happiness Report. The first was in 2012 and the second in 2013 (it was not designed to be an annual undertaking, hence no report last year).
Women tend to be happier than men in North America, Australia-New Zealand, and south and east Asia but less happy than men in eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa.
Bloomberg