Summary: This weekend: the happiest and saddest countries in the world. It’s The Weekend at ESLnewscast.com. Hello, I’m Cory Renzella, and I hope you’re having a happy weekend, so far. Happiness is what I’ll be talking about today, or specifically, happy countries. Every year for the past six years, the Legatum Institute, an organization in London, has been measuring the happiness of 142 countries around the world. At the beginning of this year, the organization publicized, or made public, the results of what it calls the “Prosperity Index”. The results show how happy people are in different countries. It’s not easy to measure something like happiness, so this organization included a lot of things that probably influence happiness. Those things include how much money people have; how stable, or reliable, their government is; and how free, happy, well educated, and safe they are. This organization looked at a lot of numbers but also surveyed, or asked questions of, people in each country. Before I tell you the name of the happiest country in the world, I’ll give you a chance to guess. Which one do you think it is? Here’s a hint: it’s a small country in Europe. All right, here’s the answer. This year, the happiest country in the world is Norway. Numbers two through 10 on the list are: Denmark, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Finland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Ireland. If you look at that list, you can see that the happiest countries have a lot in common. Many are Scandinavian countries; Scandinavia is an area in northwestern Europe. They’re also democracies, meaning the people choose their leaders; they’re countries with smaller populations; the people have a lot of personal freedoms; the governments collect a lot of taxes and use that money to provide many benefits to the people; and the populations are homogenous, which means that most of the people have similar backgrounds, races, and ethnicities. The opposite of homogenous is heterogeneous, or diverse. A country like the United States is diverse, because a lot of people from very different backgrounds live there. And speaking of the United States, last year it was 10th on the list, but this year it is 12th. One reason for that is fewer people believe that if they work hard, they’ll do well in life. So, that pessimistic, or hopeless, belief makes them feel less happy. But 12th place isn’t too bad, since the list includes 142 countries. Can you guess the 142nd happiest country? In other words, can you guess which country is the saddest country on the list? It’s the Central African Republic, a small country in central Africa. There, the average person only lives for 48 years and makes just US$790 in an entire year! Also, only 2% of the people have internet access, or the ability to connect to the internet, in their homes. Other countries at the bottom of the list are Congo, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, and Haiti. So, if you believe that this list is accurate and you don’t want to feel sad, then you know which countries you should avoid going to. And, if you want to be as happy as possible, you also know the best countries to go to. ~~~~~~~~~~ I’ve lived most of my life in the United States, but I moved to Taiwan two years ago. The two countries are very different, but I’ve noticed that there are some things that are true about happiness in both countries; and perhaps, in every country. For example, fairness is very important to people in both countries. People are unhappy when they believe that they’re being treated unfairly, whether it’s by the government or some other group. And unfortunately, there is a lot of unfairness in the world. In addition, I’ve noticed that the Americans and Taiwanese who have hope seem to be happy. If a person has hope, that means they believe that they will have a good future. So, even if someone doesn’t have a lot of money, a very good education, or a great job, just having hope and the belief that their lives will improve,
