Despite terrorist attacks and falling economic confidence: The world has become a slightly happier place. This is the clear result of WIN’s 40th Annual Global End-of-Year-Survey, exploring the outlook, expectations, views, and beliefs towards the new year around the globe. The German WIN member Produkt + Markt has conducted the study in Germany. 68% of the 66,541 people surveyed in 66 countries worldwide said they feel happy about their lives. This presents a slight increase of 2% compared to last year’s figure.

However, results vary significantly from region to region: with regard to “net happiness” (“happy” minus “unhappy”), Fiji und China are the happiest countries in the world with net scores of +89% and +80% respectively. In contrast, Iraq is ranked the unhappiest country for the third time in a row with a net score of less than +1%.

For detailed results, please see WIN’s official press release below.