Illustrative stock photo (source: SME)
Slovakia placed 39th in the recent World Happiness Report, released on March 14. It ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels, and 117 countries by the happiness of their immigrants.
Compared with its Visegrad Group (V4) neighbours, happier people live in the Czech Republic which ranked 21st. Poland ranked 42nd, while Hungary ranked 69th.
The survey carried out by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) is evaluating income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust and generosity.
It implies that the happiest people worldwide are the Fins, followed by the Norwegians and the Danes. Other happy countries include Iceland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia, the TASR newswire reported.
Conversely, people living in sub-Saharan countries (like Burundi, Central Africa, Southern Sudan, Tanzania and Rwanda), as well as war-torn countries like Syria and Yemen are not very happy, the report suggests.
The main focus of the 2018 report, in addition to its usual ranking of the levels and changes in happiness around the world, is on migration within and between countries. Perhaps the most striking finding of the whole report is that the ranking of countries according to the happiness of their immigrant populations is almost exactly the same as for the rest of the population.
