The 21 happiest countries in the world

People in the happiest countries in the world trust their governments and businesses, see themselves as free to make life decisions, and say they have good social support.

Having a high life expectancy at birth helps.

In a new dispatch called the World Happiness Report, a group of independent experts including economist Jeffrey Sachs, surveyed people in 156 countries to find out how highly they evaluated their lives on a scale from 0-10.

The report took into account several factors, of which 6 were found to be the most important:

• Real GDP per capita
• Healthy life expectancy at birth
• Freedom to make life choices
• Generosity
• Perceptions of corruption

We took a look at the top 21 countries: