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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.

See the report

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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Players with German football team Bayern Munich show their disappointment after losing the UEFA Champions League final to Chelsea FC on Saturday.

MAINZ, Germany -- Only one-in-six Germans can recall a moment in which they felt truly happy, according to a new survey.

The poll also suggests that many Germans feel weighed down by the financial crisis in Europe -- despite the fact the country enjoys a record of solid growth.

The results showed that nearly half of all Germans say they are increasingly incapable of "true relaxation" and enjoying their free time, due to the stress of their everyday lives and the feeling of being constantly reachable.

German perfectionism may be part of the problem. About eight-in-10 of those surveyed remarked that they experience pleasure best when they have managed to achieve something first.

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And while 91 percent of participants said that pleasure makes life worthwhile, only 15 percent recalled moments in which they felt truly happy.

'Traditional German virtues'
In recent months, German health officials have warned about so-called "burn-out syndrome," as experts highlighted a significant rise in the number of people suffering from depression in the country.

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The poll was carried out by market research firm Rheingold. Psychologists interviewed 60 men and women and polled 1,000 other individuals across the country.

"We found that traditional German virtues, such as conscientiousness and the drive for perfectionism, played an important role in the answers of many people," said Rainer Pfuhler, the firm's marketing director. "While we did not specifically ask about the economic crisis in Europe, many participants in the survey independently raised the question 'why they cannot easily enjoy life', despite the fact that Germany is doing really well."

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Bhutan's Prime Minister Jigme Thinley (left) and Laura Chinchilla, Costa Rica's presdent, during a United Nations panel discussion Monday on "happiness and well-being."

The world needs a new economic model based around “gross global happiness” rather than simply making money, according to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Ban, speaking at a meeting organized by the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan called “Happiness and Well-being: Defining a New Economic Paradigm”, said social and environmental factors should be considered, a statement posted on a United Nations website said.

“Gross National Product has long been the yardstick by which economies and politicians have been measured. Yet it fails to take into account the social and environmental costs of so-called progress,” Ban told at the meeting at U.N. headquarters in New York Monday.

“We need a new economic paradigm that recognizes the parity between the three pillars of sustainable development. Social, economic and environmental well-being are indivisible. Together they define gross global happiness,” he added.

Bhutan introduced the idea of “Gross National Happiness” in the early 1970s and in 2011 the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution noting that using a purely financial indicator “does not adequately reflect the happiness and well-being of people in a country.”

Ban noted that other countries have become interested in the idea, such as the United Kingdom, where authorities are experimenting with measuring “national well-being,” the statement said.

The President of the General Assembly, Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, added that “today’s unprecedented ecological, economic and social challenges have made the achievement of happiness and well-being an unachievable goal for many.”

“It is imperative that we build a new, creative guiding vision for sustainability and our future -- one that will bring a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach that will promote sustainability, eradicate poverty and enhance well-being and happiness,” Al-Nasser said, according to the statement.

With a royal wedding, television in Bhutan comes of age

In December last year, in a speech to India’s parliament, Bhutan’s Prime Minister Jigmi Thinley outlined his country’s ideas.

According to an edited version of his speech posted online, Thinley said the world today was “deeply troubled.”

“Somewhere, along the way, we lost our nobler sense and let our greed take over to engender an obsession for creation of wealth at any cost,” he said in the speech. “Economists or powers behind market forces and their flawed theories fuelled this obsession.”

According to the CIA Factbook, the first democratic elections in Bhutan were held in 2008. Some 47 percent of the population are literate and its GDP per person is $6,000.

Its economy is "one of the world's smallest and least developed," the Factbook says. "The industrial sector is technologically backward, with most production of the cottage industry type," it adds.

The first radio station was launched in 1973 as a private company but is now owned by the state. The first TV station, also state-owned, was allowed by the government in 1999.

It introduction prompted concern about children copying WWE wrestling moves, pornography, the loss of Bhutanese culture and a rise in crime, according to BBC News.

TORONTO -- Despite economic hardship, wars and natural disasters, the world is a happier place today than it was four years ago and Indonesians and Mexicans seem to be the most contented people on the planet, according to one survey.

Regionally, Latin America had the highest number of happy people, followed by North America, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East and Africa. Only 15 percent of Europeans said they were very happy.

More than three-quarters of people worldwide who were questioned in an international poll said they were happy with their lives and nearly a quarter described themselves as very happy.

"It is not just about the economy and their well-being. It is about a whole series of other factors that make them who they are today," John Wright, senior vice president of Ipsos Global, told msnbc.com on Friday. Ipsos Global has surveyed the happiness of people in 24 countries since 2007.

But Wright added that expectations of why people are happy should be carefully weighed.

"What we discovered is sometimes the greatest happiness is a relationship, a hot cooked meal and roof over our heads for shelter," he said.

Brazil and Turkey rounded out the top five happiest nations, while Hungary, South Korea, Russia, Spain and Italy had the fewest number of happy people.

Perhaps proving that money can't buy happiness, residents of some of the world biggest economic powers, including the United States, Canada and Britain, fell in the middle of the happiness scale, he said.

"There is a pattern that suggests that there are many other factors beyond the economy that make people happy, so it does provide one element but it is not the whole story," Wright said. "Relationships remain the No. 1 reason around the world where people say they have invested happiness and maybe in those cultures family has a much greater degree of impact."

On a more personal note, married couples tended to be happier than singles but men seemed to be as content as women, Wright said. Education and age also had an impact with more people under 35 saying they are very happy than 25-49 year olds. Higher education also equated with higher happiness.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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