According to the new survey by Eurostat, people in Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland are the happiest in the EU. Over three quarters of people (76% in each of these countries) claimed to feel happy all or most of the time over the last four weeks. The next happiest individuals are in Luxembourg (74% of people), Spain (72%) and Denmark (70%).
In contrast, the frequency of being happy is the lowest in Latvia (where 31% of people reported being happy all or most of the time) and Bulgaria (35%), followed by Croatia (42%), Lithuania (45%), Greece and Romania (both 46%).
Looking at the extremes, Spain recorded the highest share of people that were happy all of the time (29%), while a similar share of people in Latvia (28%) reported being happy rarely or never over the last four weeks.
Eurostat notes that, to measure people’s happiness, respondents were asked to rank their frequency of being happy in the past four weeks on the following scale: ‘all of the time’, ‘most of the time’, ‘some of the time’, ‘a little of the time’ or ‘none of the time’.
Source: Eurostat