Iraq, Pakistan and Somalia are all happier than India: UN report

It might not be the most convincing reason to smile, but it’s the most valid one - India is lagging behind 110 other countries when it comes to happiness, a United Nations report has found.

The World Happiness Report, which comes out annually, uses gross domestic product per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity as well as the perception of corruption.

The survey also uses questions like: Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday? Did you experience the following feelings during a lot of the day yesterday? How about enjoyment? How about happiness? How about worry? How about sadness? How about anger? The answers to the first three questions reveal positive emotional feelings, and the following negative ones.

India isn’t doing so well, with countries you might expect to be less happy - Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Serbia and Ghana - being much ahead of it.

While the report didn’t comment on India’s happiness specifically, it did have this to offer on South Asia in general: “In South Asia there was a significant drop in average life evaluations. The positive contributions from continuing economic growth and greater generosity were more than offset by the effects of declining social support, and of less perceived freedom to make life choices. Inequality in the distribution of happiness also grew significantly within South Asia.”

Here are the ten happiest countries in the world: Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Netherlands, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Austria, Iceland and Australia.

On the other hand, the ten least happy countries (in descending order of sadness) are Togo, Benin, Central African Republic, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Guinea, Comoros, Syria and Senegal.