Gallup and Healthways recently released an annual survey that looked into well-being around the globe and there are some interesting things to draw from the survey. The research inaugurated last year and aimed at ranking countries in the realm of five categories did over 146,000 surveys in 145 countries. So in which countries do the happiest people live, according to the results of the survey?

For the second year in a row, Panama seems to be thriving in the five categories of the best countries to live in:

  • Physical – looks at the health and energy levels of people.
  • Community – checks to see if people like where they are living.
  • Financial – analyzes the ability of persons controls their economy.
  • Social lives – looks to see if people have desirable support in terms of relationships and love.
  • Purpose – aims at finding out the level of motivation of people to achieve goals plus knowing if they like what they do.

Life in Panama seems to be at it’s best with 53% of people in the country giving positive feedback in three or more of the five categories that were being researched. The US is 23rd in the rankings with 30.5 percent positive responses.

Afghanistan is rock bottom in the list – none of the residents is thriving in three or more of the categories. In fact, no resident is thriving in financial, purpose and social well-being metrics.

The top 10 on the list are:

  1. Panama
  2. Costa Rica
  3. Puerto Rico
  4. Switzerland
  5. Belize
  6. Chile
  7. Denmark
  8. Guatemala
  9. Austria
  10. Mexico

The worst of all the countries ranked from the bottom-most are:

  1. Afghanistan
  2. Bhutan
  3. Cameroon
  4. Togo
  5. Tunisia
  6. Congo-Kinshasa
  7. Ivory Coast
  8. Benin
  9. Haiti
  10. Ghana

The other interesting stat that was established from the survey is the fact that an average of 1 out of 6 adults was found to portray positive results in at least three of the categories.

On top of this, it was also found that Latin Americans displayed better levels of well-being than people from other parts of the world. These were based on the fact that Latin Americans characteristically portrayed better chances of exhibiting positive experiences like laughing, smiling, a sense of enjoyment and a feeling of respect for other people.

On the contrary, countries in Sub-Saharan Africa had a relatively low level of well-being when compared to the other regions. The other interesting thing to note is that the sense of well-being index metrics was not correlated to the GDP of countries under the microscope.

In fact, some countries with great economic stability such as Korea and Croatia had poor well-being stats. However, war-torn populations had poor metrics thanks to the effects left by political instability.

Afghanistan is a classic example of a country in this category and it is no surprise that it sits at the base of the rankings.

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This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. Dana Roberts

    So Denmark is not at the top … Ok , but Mexico ranks 10 ????? I may move someday to Panama .

  2. Jennifer Travis Sattler

    Interesting!

  3. Murali Thurairajah

    awesome

  4. Panos Desaparecido

    SHAREd !! tnx

  5. Anna Maria Reynolds

    Panama , lovely place! <3

  6. George Vardaksis Koutroubesis

    Switzerland !!!

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