From Iceland — Icelanders Just As Happy Now As Before The Crash

Icelanders Just As Happy Now As Before The Crash

Published June 22, 2012

A new poll shows Icelanders are the second happiest people in Europe, and have reached levels of satisfaction that existed before the 2008 economic collapse.
A newly published survey from Eurobarometer shows that the Danes are the happiest people in Europe, but following close behind them are the Icelanders. In all, 56% of Icelanders said they were very pleased with life, while 40% were simply pleased. In all, 96% of Icelanders are therefore quite happy with their daily lives.
After the Icelanders, the Dutch, the Swedish and the British are also happy with their lives. At the bottom of the list, the Bulgarians are the least happy with their lives, with only about 5% reportedly being very happy. Almost the same results were measured as well for the Greek and the Portuguese.
These results suggest that either happiness with life is not connected to economic strength, or that Iceland is doing better economically than conventional wisdom dictates. In fact, professor of sociology Stefán Ólafsson points out on his blog that these levels of satisfaction are comparable to pre-crash levels. He also points out that these levels have little to do with it being summer – the survey was conducted last November.

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