(Photo credit: Tim Trad)

 
The land of quality chocolate, breathtaking scenery, and cutting-edge science (e.g. Large Hadron Collider, CERN) is also the happiest place on the planet. Switzerland edged out Iceland and Denmark to climb to the top spot in the 2015 World Happiness Report.

Sertig Valley, Switzerland (Credit: Lonely Planet)

The African nation of Togo, noted for its poor human rights record and political instability, sits at the opposite end of the spectrum as the unhappiest country. The findings represent averaged life evaluation data from 2012 to 2014.

Respondents evaluated the quality of their lives on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 represents the worst possible outcome and 10, the best. Being a subjective measure, happiness was assessed based on the Cantril Ladder or Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale developed by social researcher Dr. Hadley Cantril.

The report targets six key variables in explaining the regional variations in life satisfaction: GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, generosity, and the absence of corruption.

In general, North American and European countries scored the highest. The top five happiest countries (in order) are Switzerland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, and Canada.

The first World Happiness Report was published in 2012.