The World Happiness Report 2018, the 6th report since its launch in 2012, was released on March 14, 2018, at a launch event at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican. The report is available online at http://worldhappiness.report/.
Dr. Haifang Huang at the Department of Economics is an associate editor for the report, and a co-author for chapter 2, together with John Helliwell, Shun Wang, and Hugh Shiplett. Chapter 2 ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels measured in the Gallup World Polls in the period 2015-2017. Finland is on top in this year's report, though the top 5 countries (Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland in this order) are all within the same statistical confidence band.
A focus of this year's report is on migration within and between countries. Consistent with this focus, Chapter 2 provides a ranking of 117 countries, those with sufficient survey samples in the years from 2005 to 2017, by the happiness of their immigrant populations. Finland is also on top. A striking finding is that the ranking of immigrants' happiness looks almost exactly like the ranking for domestic-born populations. This shows that the happiness of immigrants depends predominantly on the quality of life where they now live. Two more case studies, one on Canada and the other on UK, further illustrate the pattern of convergence.
Dr. Haifang Huang at the Department of Economics is an associate editor for the report, and a co-author for chapter 2, together with John Helliwell, Shun Wang, and Hugh Shiplett. Chapter 2 ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels measured in the Gallup World Polls in the period 2015-2017. Finland is on top in this year's report, though the top 5 countries (Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland in this order) are all within the same statistical confidence band.
A focus of this year's report is on migration within and between countries. Consistent with this focus, Chapter 2 provides a ranking of 117 countries, those with sufficient survey samples in the years from 2005 to 2017, by the happiness of their immigrant populations. Finland is also on top. A striking finding is that the ranking of immigrants' happiness looks almost exactly like the ranking for domestic-born populations. This shows that the happiness of immigrants depends predominantly on the quality of life where they now live. Two more case studies, one on Canada and the other on UK, further illustrate the pattern of convergence.