By NAN Contributor
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Tues. Mar. 21, 2017: The Caribbean may have sea, sun and sand and be a holiday destination many love but it’s not that happy according to the World Happiness Report 2017.
Only two Caribbean nations made the top 50 list of the Happiest Countries in the World.
Trinidad & Tobago at number 38th, is reportedly the Happiest Caribbean nation in the region according to the report, edited by John Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey Sachs.
The second Happiest Caribbean nation is Belize, which came in at 50 on the global rankings.
Jamaica took the spot as third happiest Caribbean nation even though it ranked at a low 76 while the Dominican Republic was fourth on the ranks of happiest Caribbean nation but scored a global rank of only 86th. No other Caribbean nation made the list of 155 nations.
Norway led the ranks this year as the Happiest Country in the World. It was followed by Denmark, which dropped to the second spot in the latest report. Canada came in at 7th while the U.S. ranked lower down at number 14. The United Kingdom ranked even lower – at 19th.
The title of Happiest country in Latin America and Central America went to Costa Rica, which came in at 12th. Chile ranked at 20, Brazil at 22 and Argentina at 24th.
The measure of ‘Happiness” was based on 3,000 respondents evaluating their current lives on a ladder where 0 represents the worst possible life and 10 the best possible. The factors taken into account were GDP per capita, healthy years of life expectancy, social support (as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble), trust (as measured by a perceived absence of corruption in government and business), perceived freedom to make life decisions, and generosity (as measured by recent donations)
