World’s Happiest Country Is Revealed By New Poll

A new poll has revealed that the world’s happiest country is Switzerland. It must be all of those cuckoo clocks and chocolate that has made them so gleeful.

The poll was conducted by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), an initiative that has been endorsed and supported by the United Nations, and this is the third year that the scheme has been run.

In order to collect the data, the World Happiness Report analysed and examined 158 countries. The United Nations hope that this data will ultimately influence government policy surrounding nation’s inhabitants.

Switzerland came out on top of the list, while they were then closely followed by the likes of Iceland, Denmark, Norway, and Canada. However on the compete opposite end of the spectrum, Togo was voted to be the World’s least happy country, while the citizens of Burundi, Syria, Benin and Rwanada are far from ecstatic too.

The release date of this data is for from coincidental too as the survey was provided to the general public on the eve of the presidential elections in Togo, a country that has been run by members of the same family for 48 years.

SDSN, which was originally launched in 2012, is made up of government officials, individuals from academia, and the private sector. They amalgamate their table of content from data that they’ve collected from the Gallup World Poll. They then take into consideration a number of other topics, such as healthy life expectancy, living conditions, and corruption in the countries.

According to the BBC, the report explained:

“Increasing happiness is considered a proper measure of social progress and goal of public policy. A rapidly increasing number of national and local government are using data and research in their search for policies that could enable people to have better lives.”

Switzerland usurped last year’s winners Denmark to top spot on the poll, and and in the process rose there from third.

Meanwhile, while speaking to CNN, Jeffrey Sachs, who is the SDSN’s director and one of Columbia University’s economics professors, explained that there isn’t a “single key to happiness.”

“All of these countries do well in several ways. Being rich? That’s good, but it’s only a modest part of the story. Trusting society, having a government that ranks on low in corruption, a society where people are generous and volunteering, all of these are important for happiness.”

The U.N. General Assembly declared World Happiness Day as March 20 in 2012.

Meanwhile, the United States Of America came in 15th, just behind Mexico, Austria, Costa Rica, and Israel.

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