Iceland Fifth Happiest In Europe

Iceland and Norway are joint fifth and sixth on the list of happiest European nations, reports Vísir.

The list, compiled by Eurostat, was published on the International Day of Happiness (which is a thing apparently) and was based on a survey conducted in nearly all European countries in 2013.

The results are based on three areas in which people rated their satisfaction with life on a scale of one to ten.

The three areas include overall life satisfaction, affects, or the presence of positive feelings and absence of negative feelings, and eudaimonics, the feeling that one’s life has a meaning.

The first four places on the list are shared equally between Denmark, Finland, Switzerland and Sweden, while Iceland and Norway equally share fifth and sixth position with a score of 7.9 out of ten.

In 2013, the highest average rating of life satisfaction in Europe was to be found among the population who were in good health. In fact good health was a higher indicator of happiness than income and reflecting this on the opposite side of the spectrum, the single factor responsible for lowering people’s life satisfaction was poor health.

“Women and men were nearly equal in their happiness and younger citizens of the European Union were happier than other age groups. The unemployed and not working were generally the least happy with life (5.8) compared to people in full-time employment (7.4) or people in education or training (7.8), who have the highest scores,” reads the report.

The lowest score was 4.8 in Bulgaria, with Portugal, Hungary, Greece and Cyprus just above, on 6.2.