Don't worry, be happy! According to the first United Nations' World Happiness Report from the Earth Institute at Columbia University:
The happiest countries in the world are all in Northern Europe (Denmark, Norway, Finland, Netherlands). Their average life evaluation score is 7.6 on a 0-to-10 scale. The least happy countries are all poor countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (Togo, Benin, Central African Republic, Sierra Leone) with average life evaluation scores of 3.4. But it is not just wealth that makes people happy: Political freedom, strong social networks and an absence of corruption are together more important than income in explaining well-being differences between the top and bottom countries.
Ronald Bailey at Reason magazine responds: "The report claims that 'just wealth' is not enough to make people happy, citing political freedom, strong social networks, and lack of corruption as prerequisites for happiness. Of course, those same three items are also precisely the prerequisites for the kind of sustained economic growth that produces, well, you know, wealth."
The United States comes in at No. 11 among 156 countries. I suppose that's not bad, but it's also meaningless. An essential guarantee of this country's founding, right up there with life and liberty, is the pursuit of happiness. As Robert Samuelson notes: "But the achievement of happiness is not an entitlement. The happiness movement is at best utopian; at worst, it's silly and oppressive."
