April 21, 2017
Iran is not a very happy country. A new UN “Happiness Index” ranks Iran a tearful 108th out of 155 countries, putting it in the unhappiest third of the world.
In terms of happiness, Iran ranks just below Cameroon and just above Albania.
Iran’s ranking was pumped up by the country’s GDP per capita and its life expectancy, which were higher than most countries around it, but those were offset by polls that show Iranians don‘t feel they get much social support from fellow Iranians and do not feel they have the freedom to make choices about how they will live their lives.
The ranking suggested that cold weather may invigorate people to happiness. The five Nordic countries ranked first, second, third, fifth and 10th. The other five countries in the top 10 were Switzerland, the Netherlands and three English-speaking countries: Canada, New Zealand and Australia. (The US ranked 14th.)
Meik Wiking, chief executive of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen, said, “What works in the Nordic countries is a sense of community and understanding in the common good,” areas where Iran ranked low.
The ranking is produced by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a global initiative run by the United Nations.
Part of the ranking was based on economic statistics like per capita wealth, while other parts were based on surveys in which people gave scores from 1 to 10 on how much social support they feel they get from their community if something goes wrong, their freedom to make their own life choices, their sense of how much corruption there is in their country, and how generous they believe their fellow nationals are.
The highest ranked countries with a Muslim majority were the UAE at 21st, Qatar at 35th, Saudi Arabia at 37th, Kuwait at 39th and Bahrain at 41st, suggesting that wealth does help bring happiness.
Iran was in the bottom third of the Islamic world.
Of the 10 unhappiest countries, eight were in Africa. Syria and Yemen, both bedeviled by civil wars, were the other two.
Looking at changes in happiness over the last decade, the index reported the greatest growth in happiness was found in Nicaragua and Latvia, while the biggest drops by far were in Venezuela and the Central African Republic.
Iran was on the dismal side. It’s ranking on the index has plummeted over the last decade. Its happiness score fell more than all but 14 other countries.
While Iran ranks 108th in 2017, it ranked 105th last year and 110th the year before that.
