Posted on 09/09/2013 12:24:12 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
United States residents have an extra reason to smile according to a recent report released by Columbia University's Earth Institute. According to their findings, northern Europe received the highest satisfaction and happiness ranking in life, while Egypt and a few others hit the lowest since the Eurozone crisis via background information from the 2013 World Happiness Report released Monday.
When looking at a survey of over 156 countries, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden were ranked as the happiest places, and regions in Sub-Saharan Africa were noted as being the least likely places for overall life satisfaction, according to the report. The United States ranked in at number 17 in the survey in terms of overall happiness and life satisfaction.
Unfortunately, it still didn't score quite as high as you might expect, especially when considering other places. For instance, Canada comes in before the United States at no. 6, Australia, no. 10 and so forth.
This survey looked at information between 2010 and 2012, following the first rankings from the Earth Institute that was released just last year.
While researchers note that many areas are continuing to see improvements and progress regarding ways of life, social and economic upheaval in some areas has caused disarray and problems that have prevented such changes. For instance, the report shows that Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy all drastically fell due to the Eurozone crisis. Areas including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Myanmar also felt the political turmoil of recent issues.
The report notes, in fact, that of all places, Egypt suffered the greatest fall in terms of happiness.
(Excerpt) Read more at scienceworldreport.com ...
Northern Europe is home to todays “Lotus Eaters”.
I had forgotten about these people described in Homer’s Odyssey.
They were a race of people living on an island near North Africa (possibly Djerba) dominated by lotus plants. The lotus fruits and flowers were the primary food of the island and were narcotic, causing the people to sleep in peaceful apathy.
Nice to know that someone still reads the classics.
since many of ours states have more population than many of those countries, they should break down the US by states. I bet it would be surprising to the world.
Most of the Africans I've known have been -- not to be too patronizing, I hope -- happy and cheerful people. Some of the Scandinavians I've known have been dour, unemotional people. Not all of them, but enough to make me wonder. Maybe the Africans were just happy not to be living in Africa anymore, but findings like this make me wonder a little how the results were compiled.
How does the UK have so much more happiness than the US explained by generosity?
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