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Nordic Nations Rate Happiest Places to Live for Expats

If you want to be among the world’s happiest expats, then head for Finland.

Not only is the Scandinavian country home to the happiest expats, but also rates top as the country with the happiest population.

The plaudits come from two years of comprehensive polls across 117 nations by the World Happiness Report.

Nordic countries are clearly the best places to live despite the cold, according to their inhabitants and expats.

Finland tops the table – followed by Norway in second, Denmark third and Iceland fourth, with Sweden in ninth place.

Remarkable consistency

The World Happiness Report 2018 ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels, and 117 countries by the happiness of their expats. The report places a special emphasis on expats and their families.

“The most striking finding of the report is the remarkable consistency between the happiness of immigrants and the locally born,” said report co-editor Professor John Helliwell of the University of British Columbia.

“All of the top 10 countries for overall happiness are in the top 11 countries for immigrant happiness based on surveys covering 2005-2015.

“Although immigrants come from countries with very different levels of happiness, their reported life evaluations converge towards those of other residents in their new countries.

“Those who move to happier countries gain, while those who move to less happy countries lose, though the adjustment of happiness is not complete, as migrants still reflect in part the happiness of their birth country.”

Unhappiest nations

At the other end of the table, the country with the unhappiest people is Burundi in Africa.

Other African countries in the bottom 10 (least happy first) are the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Tanzania, Rwanda, Liberia and Malawi.

They share the bottom placings with Haiti and war-torn Syria and Yemen.

The US (18), UK (19) and United Arab Emirates (20) all lie next to each other in the ratings.

The popular expat retirement destination of Spain (36) oddly lies many places lower than the countries expats moved from to have a better life, as does the US haven of Ecuador (48).

The report offers no explanation of why somewhere expats want to go to retire should seem less happy than the country where they left.

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