STA, 21 March 2019 - The latest World Happiness Report, an annual publication of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, lists Slovenia as 44th among 156 countries ranked according to various categories meant to reflect happiness levels. The happiest country in the world for the second year running is Finland.
The 7th World Happiness Report, measuring happiness in the 2016-2018 period, gives Slovenia 6.118 points compared to Finland's 7.769 and to 2.853 for last-placed South Sudan.
Slovenia gained seven places compared to the 2018 report, placing behind Uzbekistan, Lithuania and Colombia, and right in front of Nicaragua, Kosovo and Argentina.
Slovenia did particularly well in two of the eight categories used as indicative for happiness; it is ranked 13 when it comes to freedom to make life choices and 14 in the social support category.
The latter had individuals responding to the question "If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them, or not?".
Slovenia did the poorest - ranking only 114th - in the "positive affect" category, which comprises the average frequency of happiness, laughter and enjoyment on the day prior the the survey.
In the negative affect category, recording worry, sadness and anger on the previous day, Slovenia ranks 71st.
It also performed poorly, ranking 97th, in corruption perceptions, while it fared better in the categories generosity (54th), GDP per capita (34th) and healthy life expectancy (29th).
The report, first published in 2012, was released on Monday to mark 20 March, the International Day of Happiness.
You can get a PDF of the full report here, while some other statistics about Slovenia are here
