Poll: Israel 8th Happiest Country, Ahead of U.S.

Israel tied for 8th place with Australia, Switzerland, and Canada in a Gallup World Poll survey of 155 countries that measures well-being.

Quantifying happiness isn’t an easy task. Researchers at the Gallup World Poll went about it by surveying thousands of respondents in 155 countries, between 2005 and 2009, in order to measure two types of well-being.First they asked subjects to reflect on their overall satisfaction with their lives, and ranked their answers using a “life evaluation” score from 1 to 10. Then they asked questions about how each subject had felt the previous day. Those answers allowed researchers to score their “daily experiences”–things like whether they felt well-rested, respected, free of pain and intellectually engaged. Subjects that reported high scores were considered “thriving.” The percentage of thriving individuals in each country determined our rankings.

Denmark, Finland and Norway led the list, the U.S. tied with Austria for 14th place, while the highest ranking Arab country, the United Arab Emirates, was 20th.

Israel’s neighbors ranked as follows: Egypt (115 tied), Syria (115 tied), Jordan (52), and Lebanon (73).

{DailyAlert/Noam Amdurski-Matzav.com Newscenter}