Studies have shown that people from Denmark are officially the happiest people on Earth, and now scientists think they know why.

Confusion of name: index is not a measure of happiness but rather a measure of environmental efficiency of supporting well-being in a given country

International rankings
2012 ranking

Nine out of the ten top countries are located in the Caribbean Basin, despite high levels of poverty. The ranking is led by Costa Rica for the second time in a row, and its lead is due to its very high life expectancy which is second highest in the Americas, and higher than the U.S., experienced well-being higher than many richer nations and a per capita footprint one third the size of the U.S. Among the top 40 countries by overall HPI score, only four countries have a GDP per capita of over US$15,000. The highest ranking OECD country is Israel in 15th place, and the top Western European nation is Norway in 29th place, just behind New Zealand in 28th.[6][18][19] Among the top five world's biggest economies in terms of GDP, Japan has the highest ranking in 45th place, followed by Germany in 46th, France is placed 50th, China 60, and the U.S. is ranked 105, mainly due to its environmental footprint of 7.2, the seventh highest of all countries rated for the 2012 index.[20]

2012 Happy Planet Index[5]
Rank Country HPI
Experienced well-being
Life expectancy
Ecological footprint
1 Costa Rica 64.0 7.3 79.3 2.5
2 Vietnam 60.4 5.8 75.2 1.4
3 Colombia 59.8 6.4 73.7 1.8
4 Belize 59.3 6.5 76.1 2.1
5 El Salvador 58.9 6.7 72.2 2.0
6 Jamaica 58.5 6.2 73.1 1.7
7 Panama 57.8 7.3 76.1 3.0
8 Nicaragua 57.1 5.7 74.0 1.6
9 Venezuela 56.9 7.5 74.4 3.0
10 Guatemala 56.9 6.3 71.2 1.8
11 Bangladesh 56.3 5.0 68.9 0.7
12 Cuba 56.2 5.4 79.1 1.9
13 Honduras 56.0 5.9 73.1 1.7
14 Indonesia 55.5 5.5 69.4 1.1
15 Israel 55.2 7.4 81.6 4.0
16 Pakistan 54.1 5.3 65.4 0.8
17 Argentina 54.1 6.4 75.9 2.7
18 Albania 54.1 5.3 76.9 1.8
19 Chile 53.9 6.6 79.1 3.2
20 Thailand 53.5 6.2 74.1 2.4
21 Mexico 52.9 6.8 77.0 3.3
22 Brazil 52.9 6.8 75.2 2.9
23 Ecuador 52.5 5.8 75.6 2.4
24 Philippines 52.4 4.9 68.7 1.0
25 Peru 52.4 5.6 74.0 2.0
26 Algeria 52.2 5.2 73.1 1.6
27 Jordan 51.7 5.7 73.4 2.1
28 New Zealand 51.6 7.2 80.7 4.3
29 Norway 51.4 7.6 81.1 4.8
30 Palestine 51.2 4.8 72.8 1.4
31 Guyana 51.2 6.0 69.9 2.1
32 India 50.9 5.0 65.4 0.9
33 Dominican Republic 50.7 4.7 73.4 1.4
34 Switzerland 50.3 7.5 82.3 5.0
35 Sri Lanka 49.4 4.2 74.9 1.2
36 Iraq 49.2 5.0 69.0 1.4
37 Laos 49.1 5.0 67.5 1.3
38 Kyrgyzstan 49.1 5.0 67.7 1.3
39 Tunisia 48.3 4.7 74.5 1.8
40 Moldova 48.0 5.6 69.3 2.1
41 United Kingdom 47.9 7.0 80.2 4.7
42 Morocco 47.9 4.4 72.2 1.3
43 Tajikistan 47.8 4.4 67.5 0.9
44 Turkey 47.6 5.5 74.0 2.6
45 Japan 47.5 6.1 83.4 4.2
46 Germany 47.2 6.7 80.4 4.6
47 Syria 47.1 4.1 75.9 1.5
48 Austria 47.1 7.3 80.9 5.3
49 Madagascar 46.8 4.6 66.7 1.2
50 France 46.5 6.8 81.5 4.9
51 Italy 46.4 6.4 81.9 4.5
52 Sweden 46.2 7.5 81.4 5.7
53 Uzbekistan 46.0 5.1 68.3 1.8
54 Saudi Arabia 46.0 6.7 73.9 4.0
55 Georgia 46.0 4.1 73.7 1.4
56 Armenia 46.0 4.4 74.2 1.7
57 Paraguay 45.8 5.8 72.5 3.0
58 Nepal 45.6 3.8 68.8 0.8
59 Cyprus 45.5 6.4 79.6 4.4
60 China 44.7 4.7 73.5 2.1
61 Myanmar 44.2 5.3 65.2 1.9
62 Spain 44.1 6.2 81.4 4.7
63 South Korea 43.8 6.1 80.6 4.6
64 Canada 43.6 7.7 81.0 6.4
65 Bolivia 43.6 5.8 66.6 2.6
66 Netherlands 43.1 7.5 80.7 6.3
67 Malta 43.1 5.8 79.6 4.3
68 Yemen 43.0 3.9 65.5 0.9
69 Lebanon 42.9 5.2 72.6 2.8
70 Finland 42.7 7.4 80.0 6.2
71 Poland 42.6 5.8 76.1 3.9
72 Malawi 42.5 5.1 54.2 0.8
73 Ireland 42.4 7.3 80.6 6.2
74 Bosnia and Herzegovina 42.4 4.7 75.7 2.7
75 Romania 42.2 4.9 74.0 2.8
76 Australia 42.0 7.4 81.9 6.7
77 Iran 41.7 4.8 73.0 2.7
78 Serbia 41.3 4.5 74.5 2.6
79 Haiti 41.3 3.8 62.1 0.6
80 Azerbaijan 40.9 4.2 70.7 2.0
81 Libya 40.8 4.9 74.8 3.2
82 Croatia 40.6 5.6 76.6 4.2
83 Malaysia 40.5 5.6 74.2 3.9
84 Greece 40.5 5.8 79.9 4.9
85 Ghana 40.3 4.6 64.2 1.7
86 Cambodia 40.3 4.2 63.1 1.2
87 Slovenia 40.2 6.1 79.3 5.2
88 Iceland 40.2 6.9 81.8 6.5
89 Slovakia 40.1 6.1 75.4 4.7
90 Singapore 39.8 6.5 81.1 6.1
91 Egypt 39.6 3.9 73.2 2.1
92 Czech Republic 39.4 6.2 77.7 5.3
93 Uruguay 39.3 6.1 77.0 5.1
94 Ethiopia 39.2 4.4 59.3 1.1
95 Turkmenistan 39.1 6.6 65.0 4.0
96 Namibia 38.9 4.9 62.5 2.0
97 Portugal 38.7 4.9 79.5 4.1
98 Kenya 38.0 4.3 57.1 0.9
99 Zambia 37.7 5.3 49.0 0.8
100 Ukraine 37.6 5.1 68.5 3.2
101 Sudan 37.6 4.4 61.5 1.6
102 Hong Kong 37.5 5.6 82.8 5.8
103 Hungary 37.4 4.7 74.4 3.6
104 Belarus 37.4 5.5 70.3 4.0
105 United States 37.3 7.2 78.5 7.2
106 Djibouti 37.2 5.0 57.9 1.8
107 Belgium 37.1 6.9 80.0 7.1
108 Rwanda 36.9 4.0 55.4 0.7
109 Afghanistan 36.8 4.8 48.7 0.5
110 Mauritius 36.6 5.5 73.4 4.6
111 Denmark 36.6 7.8 78.8 8.3

franzjaeger wrote:They might have made that during winter, which really suck there.

Jamie_Lambo wrote:Heres some more notible mentions from the list of happy countries 2015:

24 singapore

Jamie_Lambo wrote:that list is a different list to the one mentioned, denmark is top of the list not bottom, and the list i put up is some other countries and their positions for 2015 i had to download the whole documents to get them off the official site