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Question: If you were to consider your life in general these days, how happy or unhappy would you say you are, on the whole?
Choices: "Very happy" "Fairly happy" "Not very happy" "Not at all happy"
Data: % of "Very happy"
Period:
Area:
30 countries/ areas
Highlight:
1 Ireland44.1%
2 United States36.7%
3 New Zealand33.0%
4 United Kingdom32.2%
5 Denmark31.8%
6 Netherlands31.1%
7 Australia29.7%
8 Switzerland 28.4%
9 Philippines27.8%
10 Chile27.5%
11 Canada25.4%
12 Israel24.5%
13 Sweden24.4%
14 Austria22.6%
15 Norway22.1%
16 Cyprus21.7%
17 Portugal19.5%
18 Spain19.2%
19 Poland19.0%
20 Japan14.3%
21 France14.1%
22 Germany13.5%
23 Italy12.4%
24 Slovenia9.3%
25 Czech Republic8.9%
26 Bulgaria8.7%
27 Slovakia7.1%
28 Hungary4.7%
28 Russian Federation4.7%
30 Latvia4.6%

Note
Can't choose/ No answer are excluded. Germany: unweighted sum of West and East Germany. Israel: unweighted sum of Jews and Arabs. United Kingdom: excluding Northern Ireland.

No data for 208 countries.

Source
ISSP 1998

Correlations with major national performance indices
Life satisfaction (10 steps)
No. of data30
Regression equation
Y = 3.466449 X +5.959
Correlation coefficient (r)0.587
Coefficient of determination (R2)0.345

GDP per capita (current US$)
No. of data30
Regression equation
Y = 155622.273951 X +10561.041
Correlation coefficient (r)0.654
Coefficient of determination (R2)0.428

Life expectancy at birth - Both sexes (years)
No. of data30
Regression equation
Y = 14.260214 X +76.945
Correlation coefficient (r)0.422
Coefficient of determination (R2)0.178

Fertility rate, total (births per woman)
No. of data30
Regression equation
Y = 0.536535 X +1.489
Correlation coefficient (r)0.170
Coefficient of determination (R2)0.029

Suicide - all ages (per 100,000 population)
No. of data30
Regression equation
Y = -19.245705 X +16.040
Correlation coefficient (r)-0.420
Coefficient of determination (R2)0.176