Chad

The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness. The World Happiness Report 2018, ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels, and 117 countries by the happiness of their immigrants. The main focus of this year’s report, in addition to its usual ranking of the levels and changes in happiness around the world, is on migration within and between countries. The overall rankings of country happiness are based on the pooled results from Gallup World Poll surveys from 2015-2017, and show both change and stability. There is a new top ranking country, Finland, but the top ten positions are held by the same countries as in the last two years, although with some swapping of places. Four different countries have held top spot in the four most recent reports- Denmark, Switzerland, Norway and now Finland. All the top countries tend to have high values for all six of the key variables that have been found to support well-being: income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust and generosity. Among the top countries, differences are small enough that that year-to-year changes in the rankings are to be expected. The analysis of happiness changes from 2008-2010 to 2015-2015 shows Togo as the biggest gainer, moving up 17 places in the overall rankings from the last place position it held as recently as in the 2015 rankings. The biggest loser is Venezuela, down 2.2 points on the 0 to 10 scale.

The World Happiness Report 2013 is a study conducted by Columbia University's Earth Institute and published in September 2013 by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). It reveals trends in the data judging just how happy countries really are on a scale running from 0 to 10. The report uses data from people in over 150 countries, surveyed by Gallup over the period 2010-12. Six key variables explain three-quarters of the variation in annual national average scores over time and among countries. These six factors include: real GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, perceived freedom to make life choices, freedom from corruption, and generosity. Note: datapoints for 2012 and 2007 refer to national averages in 2010-12 and 2005-07 correspondingly; changes from 2005-07 to 2010-12 are presented for the 130 countries with data in both periods; positive affect in 2005-07 does not include happiness (yesterday) since happiness data were not collected in the period. Reference: World Happiness Report 2013, Appendix material for Chapter 2 "World Happiness:  Trends, Explanations and Distribution", John F. Helliwell & Shun Wang.