Switzerland happiest country
Bangladeshis are happier than Indians, Nepalese and Sri Lankans, according to the 2015 World Happiness Report.
Bangladesh comes in at the 109th spot out of 158 countries surveyed. India ranks 117, Nepal 121 and Sri Lanka 132.
Sustainable Development Solutions Network, which is a global initiative for the UN, unveiled the report in New York on Thursday.
The report takes into account GDP per capita, life expectancy, social support and freedom to make life choices as indicators of happiness.
Switzerland has been named the happiest country in the world. The other countries in the top five are Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Canada.
Bangladesh's rank dropped one notch from the 2013 report, when it was on the 108th spot out of 156 countries surveyed that year.
In the 2015 report, the US is ranked 15, followed by the UK (21), Singapore (24), Saudi Arabia (35), Japan (46), Bhutan (79), Pakistan (81) and China (84).
Afghanistan and war-torn Syria joined eight sub-Saharan countries in Africa -- Togo, Burundi, Benin, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Chad -- as the 10 least happy of 158 countries.
"Increasingly, happiness is considered a proper measure of social progress and goal of public policy," the report said, adding that the happiness index described how measurements of well-being could be used effectively to assess the progress of nations.
The 166-page report was edited by Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, John Helliwell of the University of British Columbia in Canada and Richard Layard from the London School of Economics.
Sachs said the top 13 countries were the same a second year running although their order had shifted, reports AFP.
They combined affluence with strong social support, and relatively honest and accountable governments, he told a news conference.
"Countries below that top group fall short, either in income or in social support or in both," Sachs explained.
The report would be distributed widely at the United Nations and closely read by governments around the world, he said.
"We want this to have an impact, to put it straight forwardly, on the deliberations on sustainable development because we think this really matters," Sachs said.
Besides money, the report emphasised fairness, honesty, trust and good health as determinants, saying that economic crisis or natural disaster themselves did not necessarily crush happiness.
Iceland and Ireland were the best examples, the report found, of how to maintain happiness through resilient social support despite the severity of banking collapses during the financial crisis.
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