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Children play in the water in Asuncion Bay, Paraguay on Oct. 14. A newly released poll of nearly 150,000 people around the world says seven of the world's 10 countries with the most upbeat attitudes are in Latin America. Panama and Paraguay came out on top of the list.
The world's happiest people aren't in Qatar, the richest country by most measures. They aren't in Japan, the nation with the longest life expectancy. Canada, with its chart-topping percentage of college graduates, doesn't make the top 10.
A poll released Wednesday of nearly 150,000 people around the world says seven of the world's 10 countries with the most upbeat attitudes are in Latin America, some of them in spite of troubled by other measures.
One of the happiest countries, according to the survey, is Guatemala, a country torn by decades of civil war followed by waves of gang-driven criminality that give it one of the highest homicide rates in the world. Guatemala sits just above Iraq on the United Nations' Human Development Index, a composite of life expectancy, education and per capita income. But it ranks seventh in positive emotions.
"In Guatemala, it's a culture of friendly people who are always smiling," said Luz Castillo, a 30-year-old surfing instructor. "Despite all the problems that we're facing, we're surrounded by natural beauty that lets us get away from it all."
Gallup Inc. asked about 1,000 people in each of 148 countries last year if they were well-rested, had been treated with respect, smiled or laughed a lot, learned or did something interesting and felt feelings of enjoyment the previous day.
In Panama and Paraguay, 85 percent of those polled said yes to all five, putting those countries at the top of the list. They were followed closely by El Salvador, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Thailand, Guatemala, the Philippines, Ecuador and Costa Rica.
The people least likely to report positive emotions lived in Singapore, the wealthy and orderly city-state that ranks among the most developed in the world. Other wealthy countries also sat surprisingly low on the list. Germany and France tied with the poor African state of Somaliland for 47th place.
The United States ranked in the top one-quarter of the countries in the survey, ranking at 35th, one notch above China. But it was not as cheery as Canada (11th) or a number of Western European countries: Netherlands (14), Ireland (15), Denmark (16), Luxembourg (24), Belgium (26), United Kingdom (30), Sweden (34).
Prosperous nations can be deeply unhappy ones. And poverty-stricken ones are often awash in positivity, or at least a close approximation of it.
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It's a paradox with serious implications for a relatively new and controversial field called happiness economics that seeks to improve government performance by adding people's perceptions of their satisfaction to traditional metrics such as life expectancy, per capita income and graduation rates.
Beefing up GNH, 'Gross National Happiness'
The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan famously measures policies by their impact on a concept called Gross National Happiness.
British Prime Minister David Cameron announced a national well-being program in 2010 as part of a pledge to improve Britons' lives in the wake of the global recession. A household survey sent to 200,000 Britons asks questions like "How satisfied are you with your life nowadays?"
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which unites 34 of the world's most advanced countries, recently created a Better Life Index allowing the public to compare countries based on quality of life in addition to material well-being.
Some experts say that's a dangerous path that could allow governments to use positive public perceptions as an excuse to ignore problems. As an example of the risks, some said, the Gallup poll may have been skewed by a Latin American cultural proclivity to avoid negative statements regardless of how one actually feels.
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"My immediate reaction is that this influenced by cultural biases," said Eduardo Lora, who studied the statistical measurement of happiness as the former chief economist of the Inter-American Development Bank
"What the empirical literature says is that some cultures tend to respond to any type of question in a more positive way," said Lora, a native of Colombia, the 11th most-positive country.
For the nine least positive countries, some were not surprising, like Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and Haiti. For others at the bottom, Armenia at the second lowest spot, Georgia and Lithuania, misery is something a little more ephemeral.
'Unhappy is... the national mentality'
"Feeling unhappy is part of the national mentality here," said Agaron Adibekian, a sociologist in the Armenian capital, Yerevan. "Armenians like being mournful; there have been so many upheavals in the nation's history. The Americans keep their smiles on and avoid sharing their problems with others. And the Armenians feel ashamed about being successful."
The United States was No. 33 in positive outlook. Latin America's biggest economies, Mexico and Brazil, sat more than 20 places further down the list.
Jon Clifton, a partner at Gallup, acknowledged the poll partly measured cultures' overall tendency to express emotions, positive or negative. But he said skeptics shouldn't undervalue the expression of positive emotion as an important phenomenon in and of itself.
"Those expressions are a reality, and that's exactly what we're trying to quantify," he said. "I think there is higher positive emotionality in these countries."
Some Latin Americans said the poll hit something fundamental about their countries: a habit of focusing on positives such as friends, family and religion despite daily lives that can be grindingly difficult.
Carlos Martinez sat around a table with 11 fellow construction workers in a Panama City restaurant sharing a breakfast of corn empanadas, fried chicken and coffee before heading to work on one of the hundreds of new buildings that have sprouted during a yearslong economic boom driven in large part by the success of the Panama Canal. The boom has sent unemployment plunging, but also increased traffic and crime.
Martinez pronounced himself unhappy with rising crime but "happy about my family."
NBC News' Kari Huus contributed to this report.
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I can see why people who live even in grinding poverty and for whom life is difficult can in cultures that emphasize collective responsibility of family, friends or religion are the happiest. The support they get from their culture is almost like a new baby who feels secure in its mother's arms.
I think the human being feels happiest when he has the security of others around him who he/she thinks care. It is no surprise that the US ranks low in the happiness scale despite the fact that most have shelter, enough food, and other necessities of life that make one feel physically at ease.
I think it is because this country is HUGE. It is so huge that most feel a disconnectness from others in the nation. It is why, I think, for some the theory of rugged individualism prevails making the "you're on your own" philosophy prevalent and our sense of disconnectedness from each other prevail. The feeling that few care about us gives rationale to the sense of isolation and loneliness that leads to feelings of anger, hostility, depression and anxiety. If one feels that one cares little about others and other care little for you there is an emptiness in one's core. It makes some, I think, capable of doing brutal things that one would not do if they felt encircled by those who love and care about us.
Further, those nations like Guatemala are more homogeneous and less diverse. They have their own common culture. The US is SO diverse, SO spread out and has large swaths of the country who believe in an Ayn Randian and racially separate world. I would be shocked if one living in the US did NOT feel a sense of alienation because who really does care about us collectively?
I think religion helps some in the nation to feel connected to at least a group of people or a supreme being that makes them feel they are not so alone. It is this aloneness I believe that is devastating and leads to a feeling of social anomie. No wonder we have so many guns in so many houses because for most of us in the US it is a frightening place in which to live and there is that pervasive feeling that there is no one immediately there to care with a government that is SO split down the middle between those who want their government to care and those who think everyone needs to be truly on their own to take as big an amount of the financial pie as they can. If others starve or get sick tough, too bad. Life is hard, take your knocks and move on. The question is to where perhaps to die?
It is a terrible thing I believe to live like that. I am happier in a primal way when I believe there is the sense that we take care of one another despite our vastness and that we are not alone.
I do not claim to understand why people respond to questions the way they do. I do know that I have lived and worked in most of the countries listed. I can not see how anyone living in the frozen Northern European Countries, with nine month long winters could be so happy. The long nights make the Finns so depressed that they have one of the highest suicide rates in the world.
Trinidad is another country that got a chuckle from me. Less than two years ago, The Government of Trinidad declared martial law and a curfew in order to combat the drug lords and the high level of drug related murders and corruption.
Most of these countries listed have a poor history of law enforcement. Brazil for example does not prosecute anyone under eighteen years of age. The teenagers know this and carry out car jackings, rapes, murder and other violent crimes with impunity. The teenage crime wave is so bad in Brazil, that most people believe that it will be open season on tourists during the football World Cup.
This survey is full of holes in my opinion. The conclusions simply does not compute.
I love my island home - Australia....greatest country on Earth.