The World Happiness Report for 2018 has been released and can be viewed from this link.

As always, it uses a number of criteria to determine how happy (or unhappy) the citizens of countries are and then ranks each country within an index.

It is a reminder to our economics students that the goal of an economy is not purely growth in GDP but to deliver a degree of life satisfaction as well (although there is a clear correlation between the two).

This year brings two interesting details:

• There is a new country designated as the happiest!
• The index shows a positive correlation between overall happiness and the happiness of migrants

Here's a 'match up' activity to encourage some data recall for students who might use the Happiness Report as an evaluative argument.

Match the 8 country names to their position in the World Happiness report. Good luck!