April 3, 2013

Israelis are among the happiest people in the Western world, despite poor rankings of many of the criteria in a study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The OECD recently published its Better Life Index analyzing the quality of life among its 34 member countries, which includes Israel, and two nonmembers, Brazil and Russia.

Israel came out on in the Top 10 in two measures: health (Israel ranked in fifth out of 36) and happiness (eighth).

The study showed, however, that Israel scored poorly in other criteria in the study including work and life balance (32), housing (28), income (18), civil engagement (27), education (15) and environment (27).

“People in Israel work 1,889 hours a year, higher than the OECD average of 1,749 hours,” the report reads. “The share of employees working more than 50 hours per week is not very large across OECD countries. However, in Israel, some 19% of employees work very long hours, one of the highest in the OECD where the average is nine percent.”

Yet, despite the hard work, Israelis still recorded a high happiness ranking.

“When asked to rate their general satisfaction with life on a scale from 0 to 10, Israelis gave it a 7.4 grade, higher than the OECD average of 6.7,” the report shows.

More on happiness