Iceland and Norway are joint fifth and sixth in the latest list of European countries where residents are happiest with life.
The list is compiled by the European statistics agency, Eurostat, and was released this week based on a survey conducted in nearly all European countries in 2013.
The analysis is based on three areas in which people rate their satisfaction with life on a scale of one to ten.
The first four places on the list are shared equally between Denmark, Finland, Switzerland and Sweden, while Iceland and Norway equally share fifth and sixth position with a score of 7.9 out of ten.
According to Vísir, people were given questionnaires in which they were asked to assess their satisfaction with life overall, their positive or negative feelings towards existence, and finally the fullness of their lives, or whether they felt their lives have meaning.
“On a scale of naught to ten, nearly 80 percent of Europeans gave their life overall a score over six in 2013,” the Eurostat report states, “Which reflects general happiness at 7.1.”
The lowest score was 4.8 in Bulgaria, with Portugal, Hungary, Greece and Cyprus just above, on 6.2.
“Women and men were nearly equal in their happiness and younger citizens of the European Union were happier than other age groups. The unemployed and not working were generally the least happy with life (5.8) compared to people in full-time employment (7.4) or people in education or training (7.8), who have life the highest score.”
According to Eurostat, the single factor responsible for lowering people’s life satisfaction is poor health.
