Happiness is found in Denmark

Happiness is found in Denmark
From Sydsvenskan.se, September 2, 2006
Translation from Swedish: Zonka

If you want to be happier. Move to Denmark ? it's the place where people are most happy in the whole world.

What makes people happy?
The Socialphychologist Adrian White from the university of Leicester have compiled hundreds of surveys, which together contains what 80,000 people around the world have answered on questions about they feeling of happiness and unhappiness.

Nowhere in the world do people feel more happy than in Denmark. The nordic countries are seen as a whole the happiness center of the world: Iceland is 4^th, Finland 6^th and Sweden 7^th on the list.

• Health, prosperity and education is the three factors that people mostly associate with happiness, says Adrian White.
• There is a conception that capitalism creates unhappy people. However, when people are asked whether they feel happy and satisfied with their life, then it is those that lives in countries with a good health care, good mean income and access to education that mostly answers yes.

Several studies ave earlier shown that when people reach a level where they can satisfy their basic needs, then the connection between money and happiness is lessened.

Christian Bjørnskov who is a national economist, teacher and researcher at Handelshøjskolen (Business School -- ed) in Aarhus, proclaims that peoples trust as the decisive factor in why Denmark is at the top of the happiness list. In the small and homogeneous Danish society the inhabitants largely believes the best about their fellow people. They feel save and the social stability is solid.

Among the 178 countries that are in Adrian White's study it is countries that are plagued by oppression, war and/or civil war where people find themselves least happy. On the last seven places on the list is Armenia, Sudan, Ukraine, Moldavia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe and lastly Burundi in Central Africa.

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