Happiest Country Rankings

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer

Date: 13 May 2011 Time: 03:27 PM ET

In a study published in April in the journal Politics and Policy, researchers ranked 15 industrialized democracies based on the life satisfaction of their citizens.

Using four measures of government size, seen below, the researchers found that countries with larger governments also have the happiest citizens.

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Countries, from most to least satisfied	Tax revenue as percent of GDP	Government consumption as percent of real per capita GDP	Average percent of earnings replaced by unemployment benefits	Social welfare expenditures as a percent of GDP
1. Norway	43.5	18.4	39	21.6
2. Switzerland	29.2	8.8	33	20.3
3. Finland	43.9	18.7	35	26.1
4. Canada	33.4	13.2	12	16.5
5. Sweden	49.5	22.3	39	29.4
6. The Netherlands	38.8	20.8	35	20.9
7. Great Britain	36.3	17.4	12	21.3
8. Spain	35.8	18.1	36	21.2
9. Australia	30.8	15.7	22	17.1
10. United States	27.3	11.2	13	15.9
11. Japan	27.3	16.3	8	18.6
12. Germany	34.8	15.6	24	26.7
13. Italy	40.9	15.2	33	25
14. France	43.9	20.5	39	29.2
15. South Korea	25.5	10.4	9	6.9

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.