The Netherlands happiest country in the world

A Gallup World Poll survey has found that The Netherlands is the happiest country in the world.

Despite the World Cup loss and a long government formation, the Netherlands is the fifth-happiest country in the world. According to a recent poll, the Netherlands is one of the happiest in the world. 68 percent of the Dutch polled consider themselves as happy.

They surveyed thousands of respondents in 155 countries, between 2005 and 2009, in order to measure two types of well-being.

The researchers first asked subjects to reflect on their overall satisfaction with their lives, and ranked their answers using a ‘life evaluation’ score from one to ten.

They later asked questions about how each subject had felt the previous day. Those answers allowed researchers to score their ‘daily experiences’–things like whether they felt well rested, respected, free of pain and intellectually engaged.

Subjects that reported high scores were considered ‘thriving.’ The percentage of thriving individuals in each country determined the rankings.

“They also found evidence that money does buy happiness,” Forbes.com reports.

The Gallup researchers found evidence of what many have long suspected: money does buy happiness–at least a certain kind of it. In a related report, they studied the reasons why countries with high gross domestic products won out for well-being, and found an association between life satisfaction and income.

The researchers studied in the reasons why countries with high domestic product won out for well-being and found an association between life satisfaction and income.

It was found in the survey that The Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden are all clustered in the same region and all enjoy high levels of prosperity.