With Australia Day just days away and plenty of good times to be had over the long weekend, we thought it would be a great time to share a feel-good story.
A think tank after six years of research has found that Australia is the 4th happiest country in the world, sitting only behind Norway, Denmark and Sweden. The following piece on Yahoo Travel goes into details of the study.
The Top Ten Happiest Countries in the World
1. Norway
2. Denmark
3. Sweden
4. Australia
5. New Zealand
6. Canada
7. Finland
8. The Netherlands
9. Switzerland
10. Ireland
What does happiness mean to you? At its core it consists of being healthy, having enough food to feed yourself and your family and enough to money to do what you want and buy what you want. For most people that entails a nice home, decent clothes, a car or two, cable TV, good times with family and friends.
Furthermore, happiness means being able to speak what's on your mind without fear, to worship the God of your choosing, and to feel safe and secure in your own home.
Happiness means having opportunity – to get an education, to be an entrepreneur. What's more satisfying than having a big idea and turning it into a thriving business, knowing all the way that the harder you work, the more reward you can expect?
With this in mind, six years ago researchers at the Legatum Institute, a London-based nonpartisan think tank, set out to rank the happiest countries in the world. But because "happy" carries too much of a touchy-feely connotation, they call it "prosperity."
The objective of the institute's work (which is part of billionaire Christopher Chandler's Dubai-based Legatum Group) was to figure out what it is that makes happy countries happy – so that the less fortunate corners of the globe might have a benchmark to work toward.
The resulting Legatum Prosperity Index is based on a study of 142 countries comprising 96% of global population. Nations are analyzed and ranked on 89 indicators in eight categories, such as education, government and economics. The inputs for the index are both objective and subjective. It's not enough to just look at per capita GDP or unemployment rates. It also matters how hard people think it is to find jobs, or how convinced they are that hard work can bring success.
The core conceit: Prosperity is complex; achieving it relies on a confluence of factors that build on each other in a virtual circle.
So who are the happiest people in the world, as measured by Legatum?
