Above: Maracas Beach in Trinidad (CJ Photo)
By the Caribbean Journal staff
Trinidad and Tobago is the Caribbean’s happiest country, according to the latest edition of the World Happiness Report.
The report, which is published by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Solutions Network, ranked Trinidad and Tobago at 41st in the world, just ahead of El Salvador.
The number one country on the list was Switzerland, followed by Iceland.
The next-highest-ranked Caribbean country after Trinidad and Tobago was Jamaica, which came out at 65th in the world, followed by the Dominican Republic and 98 and Haiti at 119.
The rankings are based on data from the Gallup World Poll, which is based on answers to the main “life evaluation question” in the poll called the “Cantril ladder.”
The poll asked “respondents to think of a ladder, with the best possible life for them being a 10, and the worst possible life being a 0. They are then asked to rate their own current lives on that 0 to 10 scale,” according to the report.
The rankings come from representative samples from the years 2012-2014.
Trinidad was also the top-ranked Caribbean country in the last Happiness Report in 2013.
It should be noted that many of the Caribbean’s smaller island states were not included on the report.
In a response, the UNSDN said the omission of many Caribbean countries was due to “a financial constraint Gallup faces for its polling.”