Iceland and Australia top happiness poll

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They are as different as two countries can be: one big, the other small; one hot, the other cold; and at opposite ends of the world from each other. But if it's happiness you're after, Iceland and Australia are the best places to live in the world.

A new study that seeks to go beyond the simple measure of GDP and gauge more subtle aspects of wellbeing such as life-expectancy, education and living standards, puts Iceland top of the international happiness scale, with Australia a close second.

At the bottom end, the economists Andrew Leigh, of the Australian National University, and Justin Wolfers, of Wharton University, Pennsylvania, ranked Russians, Ukrainians, Romanians and Bulgarians as the world's most miserable.
Interestingly, happiness was not always dependent on wealth. The study showed that OECD statistics suggested relatively poor countries such as Mexico and Nigeria were happier than some developed nations. The economists decided to study national happiness quotas because they suspected a nation's GDP was not always a reliable measure for gauging well-being.

Using the Human Development Index, which combines life-expectancy, education and GDP, the researchers found that Australians were happier than most other people despite longer hours and a lower level of job satisfaction.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,,1807947,00.html