The 25 countries where people feel best about their lives

Panama, Costa Rica, and Puerto Rico are full of people who feel pretty good about life.

The 2014 Gallup-Healthways Well-Being ranking is based on a global survey of about 146,000 people. Respondents are asked about different aspects of how they feel about their lives. Gallup and Healthways combine those into five major dimensions:

• Purpose: Feeling good about what you do and that you can achieve your goals
• Social: Having strong relationships with others
• Financial: Having low economic stress and high economic security
• Community: Liking where you live
• Physical: Having good health

The main ranking is based on the percentage of people in a country who are "thriving" in at least three of those five categories. The Americas were the most overall thriving region in the world in 2014, while China and Sub-Saharan Africa did worse in the ranking:

Here are the 25 countries that scored the highest in the overall ranking:

For more detail, check out the full report here.

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