There can be few things less useful than a world map of happiness. If you live in one of the unhappy places, there is little chance that you will be able to move to one of the happy ones — and anyway, there's no way of knowing whether immigrants are happy there. Besides, your personal capacity for happiness is largely hard-wired by your genetic heritage and early childhood experiences.
But there are always under-employed sociologists, psychologists and economists looking for something new to research. There is also a permanent over-supply of journalists at their wits' end for something to write about. Despite Israel's gallant effort to fill the whole news cycle single-handedly, this has been a slow week for news, so let us consider the global distribution of happiness (or "subjective well-being," as the social psychologists call it).
The Satisfaction with Life Index, to give the world happiness map its proper name, does not measure objective conditions like gross domestic product per capita or average life expectancy. You can be dirt poor, like Bhutan, and still rank high in happiness. You can also be relatively prosperous but miserable, like Latvians, who are less happy than Ethiopians or Palestinians.