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Agence France-Presse

Denmark, closely followed by Switzerland, is the happiest place in the world while crisis-torn Syria and Burundi are the most miserable, according to a global ranking released Wednesday.
Hong Kong was a little bit sadder than last year, now in 75th place out of 157 countries and territories compared to 72nd last year, while mainland China was very slightly happier, up one place to 83rd.
The 2016 World Happiness Report seeks to quantify happiness as a means of making societies healthier and more efficient. The United Nations published the first such study in 2012.
As with last year, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Canada, Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia and Sweden round out the top 10, making small or medium-sized countries in Western Europe seven of the top 10 happiest countries.
WATCH: What is the world’s happiest country?


Denmark, which was ranked first in the 2013 version of the report but lost that honour to Switzerland in 2015, now reclaims its title as happiest country on Earth.
Burundi was the most miserable, followed by war-ravaged Syria, Togo, Afghanistan and six other countries in sub-Saharan Africa - Benin, Rwanda, Guinea, Liberia, Tanzania and Madagascar as the least happy countries.
READ MORE: The 2016 World Happiness Report [PDF]

The report compared data from 2005 to 2015 showing that Greece, which suffered enormously from the global recession and now faces a crippling migrant crisis, had the highest drop in happiness.
The United States, where sharp polarisation has been exposed in the 2016 presidential election campaign, out-ranked several Western European countries to be 13th most happy nation, up two spots from last year.
Germany was 16th, Britain 23rd and France 32nd. A string of Middle Eastern kingdoms - Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain - out-ranked Italy, which came in at number 50, and Japan, which took the 53rd spot.
India, the world’s largest democracy, came in at 118.
The authors said six factors - GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, social freedom, generosity and absence of corruption - explain almost three-quarters of the variation across different countries.
The report compared levels of happiness in 2005-2007, before the onset of the global recession, with 2013-2015, the most recent three-year period for which data from a Gallup World Poll is available.
Of the 126 countries for which comparable data was available, 55 had significant increases in happiness and 45 had significant decreases, the report found.
Among the top 20 gainers were Thailand and China, eight countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States and Eastern Europe, seven in Latin America, two in sub-Saharan Africa and Macedonia in the Balkans.
The 20 largest losers of happiness included Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East; Japan and India in Asia; and Cyprus, Spain, Italy and Greece in Europe - all hard hit by the economic crisis.


It’s great to be Danes: Denmark tops happiness index, Hong Kong in the middle, Burundi at the bottom

Revellers at the Tivoli amusement park in Copenhagen, Denmark. The nation reclaimed its place as the happiest country from Switzerland this year. Photo: AP

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