THE UNHAPPIEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD
Moldovans are the unhappiest people in the world. That's according to data from the World Values Survey, whose researchers interviewed tens of thousands of people in over 60 countries during the last decade. Only 44% of people in Moldova said they were happy, the lowest proportion of all the countries surveyed. Is Moldova really such an unhappy place, and why?
These statistics from the World Values Survey are often quoted in a growing body of academic research into what causes happiness, and what implications there are for public policy. Often the answers to the “are you happy?” question are averaged with those to another, slightly different question – “are you satisfied with your life?” – to produce a broader measure called subjective well-being. Moldova comes out bottom on this count, too.