Netherlands Tops the Happiness Meter

A Gallup World Poll survey has declared the Netherlands the "happiest country in the world".

They surveyed thousands of respondents in 155 countries, between 2005 and 2009, in order to measure two types of well-being.

The researchers first asked subjects to reflect on their overall satisfaction with their lives, and ranked their answers using a 'life evaluation' score from one to ten.hey later 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.

Subjects that reported high scores were considered 'thriving.' The percentage of thriving individuals in each country determined the rankings.

"They also found evidence that money does buy happiness," Forbes.com reports.

The researchers studied in the reasons why countries with high domestic product won out for well-being and found an association between life satisfaction and income.

It was found in the survey that The Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden are all clustered in the same region and all enjoy high levels of prosperity.

Source: ANI