Switzerland ranked happiest country in world

A World Happiness Report has listed Switzerland as the happiest country in the world among 158 countries worldwide.

The report, produced by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), contains analysis from leading experts in the fields of economics, neuroscience, national statistics, and describes how measurements of subjective well-being can be used to assess national progress effectively.

The report identifies Switzerland as the happiest country in the world followed by Iceland, Denmark and Norway and Canada.

Professor John F. Helliwell, of the University of British Columbia, said that as the science of happiness advances, they were getting to the heart of what factors define quality of life for citizens and they were encouraged that more and more governments around the world were listening and responding with policies that put well-being first.

The World Happiness Report 2015 shows that at both the individual and national levels, all measures of well-being, including emotions and life evaluations, are strongly influenced by the quality of the surrounding social norms and institutions. These include family and friendships at the individual level, the presence of trust and empathy at the neighborhood and community levels, and power and quality of the over-arching social norms that determine the quality of life within and among nations and generations.