Lack of security and poverty are among the larger issues that negatively affect the lives of many Mexicans, but it sure doesn’t stop them from being a happy bunch.

The evidence is in the World Happiness Report, in which Mexico ranks right up there as one of the world’s happiest places, coming in 14th on the list of 158 countries.

The index is based on polls that asks questions relating to income, life expectancy, generosity, social support, freedom and corruption to produce a measurement between 0 and 10. Zero represents the worst possible life and 10 the best possible.

If you live in first-place Switzerland, which scored 7.587 on the index, you likely have the best possible; if you’re in last-place Togo (or almost anywhere else in Africa for that matter), whose score was 2.839, life is probably pretty miserable.

But in Mexico things are pretty cheerful, if the 7.187 score is any indication.

In Latin America, only Costa Rica did better, placing 12th, while Brazil wasn’t far behind Mexico at 16th.

Mexico also came out happier than the United States, which was immediately behind in 15th place. Canadians, meanwhile, are happier than both: it was in fifth place.

After Brazil, the next Latin country on the list was Venezuela, in 23rd place, whose happiness has not been reflected in recent reports of decidedly unhappy economic conditions.

The report, which is published annually by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, is not the first happiness study of the year. In February, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published one that concluded that the world’s happiest language is Spanish.

The result was based on an analysis that identified the top 100,000 of the most frequently used words across 10 languages. Researchers then asked native speakers of the languages to rate whether the words were happy or sad on a scale of one to nine.

Spanish speakers, it turned out, use the highest number of happy words in their everyday speech.

Mexico, it would appear, is a very happy place.

Mexico News Daily