Hong Kong has fallen to its lowest-ever position on the World Happiness Report, falling down the index for the fifth consecutive year.
The study was released on Thursday to coincide with the UN’s International Day of Happiness.
The city dropped from 86th last year to 88th, sitting between Albania and Armenia. China ranked 68th, Taiwan 27th and Singapore 34th. Macau was not surveyed.
Finland, Denmark and Iceland occupied the top spots, whilst residents of Lebanon, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan were found to be the most unhappy.
The World Happiness Report is a partnership between its editorial board and pollster Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
Based on a Gallup World Poll, the survey asked around 1,000 people in each country to evaluate their current life as a whole using the image of a ladder, with the best possible life ranked as a 10 and the worst possible as zero. It used weights to construct population-representative national averages, with the final rankings based on the average of three years of samples.
Over 100,000 people in 140 countries and territories participated.
The report also cross-referenced the results along the lines of six key variables: GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and freedom from corruption.
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“Taken together, these six variables explain more than three-quarters of the variation in national life evaluation scores across countries and years, using data from 2005 onwards,” the report said.
