Where Does Your Country Rank as "Best" in World to Live? (+5K Views)

So says Lorimer Wilson editor of www.munKNEE.com. Please note that this paragraph must be included in any article reposting with a link* to the article source to avoid copyright infringement. Wilson goes on to say:

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) “Better Life Initiative” used an interactive tool to generate what they referred to as a “Your Better Life Index”  in which the volunteer participants measured their feelings of well-being and progress in 11 areas: housing, incomes, employment, social relationships, education, the environment, the administration of institutions, health, general satisfaction, security and the balance between work and family. (For detailed results area by area for all 34 countries go here.)

In the overall happiness scale which weighed all 11 topics mentioned above, the top 13 rankings were as follows:

1. Australia
2. Canada
3. Sweden
4. NewZealand
5. Norway
6. Demark
7. Unites States
8. Switzerland
9. Finland
10. Netherlands
11. Luxembourg
12. Iceland
13. United Kingdom (Britain)

The list of all 34 is as graphed below:

 

Regarding the participants views as to their quality of life the Scandinavian countries top the list:

1. Netherlands: 91%
2. Denmark: 90%
3. Finland: 86%
4. Norway: 84%
5. Sweden: 83%

followed by these 5 countries to complete the top 10:

• Canada: 78%
• Switzerland and New Zealand: 77%
• Belgium: 76%
• Australia: 75%

The United States came 14th at 70% and the United Kingdom was 15th at 68%.

15 countries ranked below the overall average of 59% including these major countries of note:

• Germany: 56% (tied for 20th)
• Italy: 54% (22nd)
• France: 51% (23rd)
• Spain: 49% (24th)

Those citizens the most unhappy with their quality of life were:

• Hungary: 23%
• Estonia: 24%
• Slovakia: 27%
• Turkey: 28%

As to the participants’ perceptions as to their countries’ quality of education the top 10 rankings were as follows:

1. Korea
2. Finland
3. Canada
4. New Zealand
5. Japan
6. Australia
7. Netherland
8. Belgium
9. Norway
10. Switzerland

And where did the U.S and the U.K. rank?

The U.S. ranked 12th tied with Poland and Iceland. The U.K. ranked 20th.

The study begs the following questions:

1. Can happiness really be measured?
2. If so, why would we want to measure it?
3. What are the benefits of  having happy citizens?

In a presentation to the OECD, in 2010,  Ruut Veenhoven of the University of Rotterdam in the Netherlands wrote  that the data showed that happiness is a realistic goal for public policy in that greater happiness is possible through policy initiatives which can be evaluated as to their effectiveness accordingly. As such, Veenhoven noted that promoting happiness and well-being is a legitimate and important goal of government.

Editor’s Note: The above article consists of reformatted edited excerpts from the original for the sake of brevity, clarity and to ensure a fast and easy read. The author’s views and conclusions are unaltered.