Image: Kids with Denmark's flag
momentimages/Getty Images
The No. 1 happiest country in the world? Denmark.
updated 8/3/2010 10:12:37 AM ET 2010-08-03T14:12:37


    1. America's Musical Cities
    2. Forbes Guide To Worldwide Travel: Midsummer
    3. America's Great Fourth Of July Celebrations




Behind the numbers

Click for slideshow: The world's happiest countries

First they asked subjects to reflect on their overall satisfaction with their lives, and ranked their answers using a "life evaluation" score between 1 and 10. Then they asked questions about how each subject had felt the previous day. Those answers allowed researchers to score their "daily experiences" — things like whether they felt well-rested, respected, free of pain and intellectually engaged.


Money matters
The Gallup researchers found evidence of what many have long suspected: money does buy happiness — at least a certain kind of it. In a related report, they studied the reasons why countries with high gross domestic products won out for well-being and found an association between life satisfaction and income.

"Money is an object that many or most people desire and pursue during the majority of their waking hours," researchers wrote in the report. "It would be surprising if success at this pursuit had no influence whatsoever when people were asked to evaluate their lives."

Indeed, Denmark, the world's happiest country, had a per-capita GDP of $36,000 in 2009, according to the Central Intelligence Agency. That's higher than 196 of the 227 countries for which the CIA collects statistics.

  1. Don't miss these Travel stories
    1. Lords of the gourd compete for Punkin Chunkin honors


    2. Airports, airlines work hard to return your lost items
    3. Expert: Tourist hordes threaten Sistine Chapel's art
    4. MGM Grand wants Las Vegas guests to Stay Well
    5. Report: Airlines collecting $36.1B in fees this year



"Costa Rica ranks really high on social and psychological prosperity," says Harter. "It's probably things systemic to the society that make people over time develop better relationships, and put more value on relationships. Daily positive feelings rank really high there."

Inhabitants of some rich countries are bound to feel happier. But happiness is elusive to define, and money isn't the only thing that influences it. Harter explains that the more abstract sense of happiness to which wealth contributes has a different effect on one's life than daily happiness.

"Each of us is two different people. We evaluate our lives periodically; we sit back and reflect and summarize things that have gone on in our lives to date," Harter says. "Another side is how you experience things daily. Daily experience affects your stress and your psychology. How you evaluate your life affects your decisions. It's important to think about how you can leverage that well-being."

© 2012


Discussion comments


Most active discussions

  1. votes comments
  2. votes comments
  3. votes comments
  4. votes comments