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And the world's happiest country is...

Denmark has been named the world's happiest country
Denmark has been named the world's happiest country


The world's happiest country has just been named, and guess what? It's not Britain.

If you're in need cheering up, you should head straight to Scandinavia, a new report suggests. Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland all feature among the world's ten happiest countries.

The World Happiness Report utilised factors such as GDP, life expectancy, social support, "perceptions of corruption", and "freedom to make life choices", to assign each country a total score.

Denmark, with 7.693 was deemed the happiest nation.

Close behind comes Norway (7.655), Switzerland (7.650), The Netherlands (7.512) and Sweden (7.480). Canada (7.477), Finland (7.389), Austria (7.369), Iceland (7.355) and Australia (7.350) completed the top ten.

Britain, with a score of 6.883, came 22nd in the study, trailing behind Costa Rica (12th), the United Arab Emirates (14th), Panama (15th), Mexico (16th) and Venezuela (20th), but ahead of France (25th), Germany (26th) and Italy (45th).

And the unhappiest country of all? Languishing at the bottom the 156 countries featured was Togo, with a rating of 2.936. Rwanda and Central African Republic, Burundi, also featured in the bottom five.

The report is based on statistics compiled between 2010 and 2012 by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. It found the world has become "a slightly happier and more generous place over the past five years". a