Happy
Today, March 20, is the third annual International Day of Happiness and just in time for this happy event is a survey showing the 10 happiest countries on Earth are all in Latin America.
American consulting company Gallup, Inc. has just released its Positive Experience Index that asked adults in 143 countries in 2014 if they had five positive experiences on the day before the survey.
Over 70 percent of people worldwide said they experienced a lot of enjoyment, smiled or laughed a lot, felt well-rested and felt treated with respect, said Gallup. Additionally, 50 percent of people said they learned or did something interesting the day before the interview.
Gallup compiled the "yes" responses from these five questions into a Positive Experience Index score for each country. The index score for the world in 2014 is 71 and has remained remarkably consistent through the years.
For the first time in Gallup's 10-year history of global tracking, all of the top 10 countries with the highest Positive Experience Index scores are all in Latin America. The index showed that people in Latin America are the most likely in the world to experience a lot of positive emotions daily.
The top 10 happiest countries and their scores are:
Paraguay : 89
Columbia: 84
Ecuador: 84
Guatemala: 84
Honduras: 82
Panama: 82
Venezuela: 82
Costa Rica: 81
El Salvador: 81
Nicaragua: 81
Guatemala is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranking 118th in terms of GDP (nominal) per capita, yet when it comes to positive emotions, it tied for fourth.
There's much to be learned from Latin America on International Day of Happiness, said Gallup, because while they aren't the wealthiest people in the world, they are certainly among the happiest.
And how did the United States do? Not too bad. The U.S. ranked 27th behind Canada, which was 17th. China placed 47th while Russia was 89th.
The happiest Asian country was The Philippines at number 11. The happiest European country was The Netherlands at number 20.
The region of the world that reports the lowest positive emotions is the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region with a score of 59. All countries in the region, exceptSaudi Arabia, had scores lower than the global mean. Tunisia's score of 52 is almost a full 20 points lower than the global mean.
People in the MENA region not only report the lowest positive emotions in the world, they also reported the highest negative emotions in the world.
In 2013, the MENA region had four of the top five countries in the world for negative emotions, including Iran, which, strangely enough, jailed four young people for making a video about happiness.
