Balkan States Look Gloomy on World Happiness Table

How happy are the people of the Balkans? Not so much, if a new table released in New York on Monday on International Day of Happiness - which the UN has promoted since 2012 - is anything to judge by.

Using a range of benchmarks ranging from income to life expectancy, welfare, corruption [lack of], trust and generosity, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, SDSN, has  - unsurprisingly - worked out that Scandinavians have most to smile out.

Minus Switzerland, they hog four of the five top places in the ranking, closely followed in sixth place by the Dutch, which may explain why voters in The Netherlands declined to vote angry right-winger Geert Wilders into power last week].

Americans and Brits seem moderately content overall, coming in at 14th and 19th place.

Equally unsurprisingly, war-torn or starving African and Middle Eastern states bump along the bottom of the table, which is where you can find Syria, Yemen, Burundi, Rwanda and the Central African Republic.

In the not-so-happy, Balkans, Romanians and Slovenes seem the happiest, or least miserable, nations, coming in at 57th and 62nd place respectively, above a clutch of other Balkan states. Serbia, Croatia and Kosovo are all in the 70s, just above Montenegro.

The two most miserable states in the Balkans are Macedonia and Bosnia, clinging on at 90th and 92nd place respectively. Macedonians may be annoyed to find themselves ranked only one spot above devastated Somalia, and only 11 above the Israeli-Occupied Palestinian West Bank.

Meik Wiking, from the Happiness Research Institute in Denmark, said the sense of wellbeing among most Scandinavians was easy to unpack. "What works in the Nordic countries is a sense of community and understanding in the common good,"...