Top 10 Happiest Country in the World: U.S., China, Japan is not included!

• comments
• 
• 

Generally speaking, countries are ranked using of one of the economic measures such as gross domestic product. However, the social scientists have pushed a new metric to be measured: Happiness.

This new metric system can have a broader set of factors which and which will influence the happiness and well-being of one person like inequality, freedom, and health, as opposed to economic measures focusing solely on economic factors. Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) released its first ever World Happiness Report  back in 2012. According to SDSN, it makes sense to have policies to raise when it comes to public happiness as much as the policies about the public's national income are being raised since then, SDSN started to release an update.

With the recent report released in 2016, FindTheData, a date reference site by Graphiq, ranked the 157 countries and territories with the happiest people. North Korea is not included in the data due to a lack of information.

To create the happiness score, the SDSN provided a survey in each country and evaluate a variety of factors starting on a scale of zero to 10. These factors are GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy and freedom to make life choices.

From all the data gathered, it showed that the richest country isn't always the happiest. U.S., China, Japan as the top three leading countries when it comes to GDP were all absent from the top 10. SDSN noted that the countries from the top 10 could achieve a good economic development however it will yield to new modern life crises such as obesity, diabetes, and depression.

Nordic countries filled the 5 spots in top 10 and according to the observations; these countries have avoided many of these crises. Denmark ranked as the happiest country in the world while Greece experienced the largest drop in happiness from 2005-07 to 2013-15.