And the world's happiest country is...

Washington D.C. [USA], Mar. 21 (ANI): If you want to pursue happiness, head to Norway as the Scandinavian country has been crowned as the world's happiest country. According to the 2017 World Happiness Report, India ranked a lowly 122, dropping four slots from last year and coming behind China, Pakistan and Nepal. The top ten countries remain the same as last year, but there has been some shuffling of places in the report. Norway moved up from fourth place to overtake Denmark at the top of the ranking. It was followed by Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland and Finland. Canada dropped from sixth to seventh place, beneath the Netherlands. This is the fifth annual World Happiness Report. It was edited by Helliwell of CIFAR (Canadian Institute for Advanced Research) and the University of British Columbia; Richard Layard, Director of the Well-Being Programme at the London School of Economics; and Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. The World Happiness Report looks at trends in the data recording how highly people evaluate their lives on a scale running from 0 to 10. The rankings, which are based on surveys in 155 countries covering the three years 2014-2016, reveal an average score of 5.3 (out of 10). Six key variables explain three-quarters of the variation in annual national average scores over time and among countries: real GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, perceived freedom to make life choices, freedom from corruption, and generosity. (ANI)