RCS Posts: Measuring the Happines of Individuals on nearly every Country on Earth

A good effort is being made by a small number of institutions to measure the happiness of the people of a given country. The results of such measurement could provide a method by which to compare the average happiness of the people of one country to that of the people of another country. Not an easy task.

               Another difficult task is to measure the economic equality of any given country in such a way as to measure economic equality levels among countries. The U.N. is one of the institutions attempting to measure and compare such less than perfectly defined terms as "economic equality" and "happiness." List of countries ordered by relative equality or happiness are now published each year or two.

               So far it seems they do a more realistic job of measuring economic equality than they do of measuring happiness.

The published results often include some interesting details such as: perception of corruption, freedom to make life choices, and GDP per capita (which is given much weight in the list below).

The top few countries from the years 2014 through 2016, listed in numerical order, with the happiest first with the rest following in descending order of happiness:
1. Norway
2. Denmark (a more recent listing has Denmark first)
3. Iceland (a together county who's people are learning they still need to participate in an ongoing national dialogue.)
4. Switzerland (It does seem that the rich may be happier than the rest of us.)
5. Finland (or maybe the colder are happier.)
6. Netherlands
7. Canada
8. New Zeland
9. Australia
10. Sweden
11. Israel
12. Costa Rica
13. Austria
14. United States (Nice to see the U.S. still in the top fifth)
15. Ireland (nice going!)
16. Germany
17. Belgium
18. Luxembourg
19. United Kingdom (Kind of like England.)
20. Chile
21. United Arab Emirates
22. Brazil
23 Czech Republic (good)
24. Argentina
25.Mexico
26. Singapore
27. Malta
28. Uruguy
29. Guatemala (How were the Maya counted?)
30. Panama
31. France
32. Thailand
33. Taiwan
34. Spain
35. Quatar
36. Colombia (not bad)
37. Saudi Arabia
38. Trinidad Tobago
39. Kuwait
40. Slovakia

               This list does not show all the information available on the orginal. You can find more complete and up to date information online. I suggest that you start with the U.N. has ONU to Spanish speakers. I know you will not believe everything you see on a list. We are pretty sure that ever country has some level of corruption. An organization of countries such as the U.N. is likely to have some corruption. Even your favorite list from your favorite organization is likely to have its bias.

               Check to see how your country is doing today by checking the latest U.N. Do check out more lists online. Do talk with us about what you find or would like to find.

by Richard Sheehan