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How To Measure Happiness

NPR

Happiness — it's something that most of us would say we seek in life, and there's plenty of differing opinion about what makes human beings happy: could it be love? Or family and friendships? Maybe it's money!

The latest World Happiness Report offers some clues. It measures a country's happiness in six parts. Luckily for the U.S., one of those factors is Gross Domestic Product, or GDP; the sum of the goods and services a country produces. GDP can be seen as a broad metric for a country's wealth, and the U.S. is top of the list when it comes to GDP rankings. On the World Happiness Report, however, the U.S. is ranked 19 — so what else goes into a country's happiness, and which nations are at the top of the list?

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Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.
Cardiff Garcia is a co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money podcast, along with Stacey Vanek Smith. He joined NPR in November 2017.
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