16 September 2018 - The World Happiness Report, a landmark survey of the state of global happiness that ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels, placed Montenegro in the 81st place within their official 2018 ranking list.
The report, the sixth one to come out since 2012, continues to gain global recognition as governments, organizations and civil society increasingly use happiness indicators to inform their policy-making decisions. Still, world happiness levels are at their lowest level in over a decade, with the increase in the number of people who say they feel stressed and worried, according to the Report published this September.
The main focus of this year’s report, in addition to its usual ranking of the levels and changes in happiness around the world, is on migration within and between countries. The overall rankings of country happiness are based on the pooled results from the Gallup World Poll surveys from 2015-2017 and show both change and stability.
Gallup surveyed more than 154,000 people in 146 countries about whether or not they had one or more of five the positive experiences on the day before the survey. At least 70 percent said they had smiled or laughed a lot, felt a lot of enjoyment, felt well rested, and felt treated with respect. All the top-ranked countries tend to have high values for all six of the key variables that have been found to support well-being: income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust and generosity. Among the top countries, differences are small enough that year-to-year changes in the rankings are to be expected.
On the other hand, the conflict-hit Central African Republic was the world’s unhappiest place last year, with Iraq in second place, according to the ranking by pollsters Gallup. Gallup also surveyed adult people on whether they had felt pain, stress, worry, anger or sadness the previous day. More respondents answered “yes” than in any survey since 2005, which raised the global “negative experience index” to 30.
One of Gallup's Senior Analysts and lead researchers on the Middle East and North Africa region, Mohamed Younis, wrote the intro to the report, stating “Collectively, the world is more stressed, worried, sad and in pain today than we’ve ever seen it”.
Montenegro was listed as 81st on the Report sheet on happiness level, while better-ranked countries in the region include Slovenia (ranked 51st), Kosovo (ranked 66th), Serbia (ranked 78th), and Greece (ranked 79th). Surprisingly, Croatia fell behind Montenegro (ranked 82nd), and Bosnia and Herzegovina took the 93rd position.
Reference: Helliwell, J., Layard, R., & Sachs, J. (2018): World Happiness Report 2018, New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network
