According to six key principles from the annual UN World Happiness Report, Israel is ranked at the fourteenth spot of the happiest countries in the world. The report ranks 156 countries “by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be.” While they do acquire various statistics to support the report, the scores are “based on individuals’ own assessments of their subjective well-being.” The six principles are social support, life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, freedom from corruption, generosity, and GDP per capita.
Finland grabbed the number one spot for the third year in a row, followed by a slew of Nordic countries, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, and Norway. Canada took the eleventh spot and the United States fell below Israel ranking at eighteen.
For the first time since the report was released in 2012, the report also ranked cities. Tel Aviv ranked number eight and Jerusalem landed in the 33rd spot. Of the new addition, editors stated that “as populations continue to move from rural to urban areas further straining resources and infrastructure, understanding sources of happiness becomes that much more vital. Not only does the report take a careful look at how happiness compares between cities globally, it assesses how happy urban dwellers are compared to their counterparts in the same country.”
