I find several things interesting from this scale. First, West Africa appears to be quite happy, considering Nigeria and Ghana are very high on the list, while South Sudan is mid-way and South Africa, Kenya and Egypt are much lower. Second, I expected the US, Canada and France to be much higher on the list. Third, Saudi Arabi is apparently quite happy, while its neighbour Iraq is much lower on the list. It suggests there are not only geographic boundaries but also social and psychological boundaries.

No matter how I look at the scale, one thing I cannot shake is the wording of their questions and whether they compared definitions of happiness. It would be very interesting to see if countries high on the list share similar definitions, while countries mid-way share their own definitions and countries toward the bottom share yet another definition.