The World Happiness Report is a groundbreaking study of the state of worldwide happiness. The World Happiness Report 2018 ranks 156 countries by happiness level and 117 countries by the happiness level of immigrants.
This yr’s report, along with the same old rating of levels and changes in happiness around the globe, focuses totally on migration inside and between countries.
The overall country happiness rating relies on the combined results of the Gallup World Poll conducted between 2015 and 2017 and shows each variability and stability.
There is a brand new country at the highest of the rankings, Finland, however the top ten positions are occupied by the identical countries as within the last two years, although with some swapping. Four different countries have held the highest spots within the last 4 reports – Denmark, Switzerland, Norway and now Finland.
All leading countries show high values on all six key variables that impact well-being: income (GDP per capita), healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust AND generosity. Among the highest countries, the differences are sufficiently small that we are able to expect changes within the rankings from yr to yr.
The writer is bound that readers are interested by which places in Southeast Asia made it to the 2018 Happiest Countries rating, so below is an inventory of nations together with the common rating of their current quality of life on a scale of 0 to 10:
Note: Brunei is the one country not included within the rating of 156 countries.
| RANK | COUNTRIES | RESULT |
| 34 | Singapore | 6.343 |
| 35 | Malaysia | 6.322 |
| 46 | Thailand | 6.072 |
| 71 | Philippines | 5,524 |
| 95 | Vietnam | 5.103 |
| 96 | Indonesia | 5.093 |
| 110 | Laos | 4.623 |
| 120 | Cambodia | 4.433 |
| 130 | Myanmar | 4.308 |
Overall, this model explains differences in life evaluations quite well each inside and across regions, in addition to for the world as an entire.
↘ GDP per capita is expressed in purchasing power parity (PPP) adjusted to constant 2011 international dollars, taken from the World Development Indicators (WDI) published by the World Bank in September 2017. GDP data for 2017 usually are not yet available, so the report extends the time series from 2016 to 2017, using country-specific real GDP growth forecasts from OECD Economic Outlook No. 102 (November 2017 issue) and the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects (last updated: 06/04/2017), after adjusting for population growth. The equation uses the natural logarithm of GDP per capita because this way suits the info significantly better than GDP per capita.
↘ The time series of healthy life expectancy at birth is constructed using data from the World Health Organization (WHO) and WDI. WHO publishes data on healthy life expectancy for 2012. The time series of life expectancy, without adjustment for health status, is accessible from WDI. The report adopts the next strategy for constructing the time series of healthy life expectancy at birth: we first generate ratios of healthy life expectancy to life expectancy in 2012 for countries with each data. The report then applies the country-specific ratios to other years to generate data on healthy life expectancy.
↘ Social support is the national average of binary responses (0 or 1) to the Gallup World Poll (GWP) query “If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends who you could count on to help you whenever you needed them, or not?”
↘ Freedom to make life selections is the national average of binary responses to the GWP query “Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?”
↘ Generosity is the residual from regressing the national average GWP response to the query “Have you given money to a charity in the last month?” on GDP per capita.
↘ Positive affect is defined as the common of the day before today’s affect measures for happiness, laughter, and joy for GWP waves 3-7 (2008-2012, and a few in 2013). It is defined as the common of laughter and joy for other waves wherein the happiness query was not asked.
Source: World Happiness Report 2018
