IRISH people may not be as happy as they thought. New research indicates that Ireland is the sixth happiest place in the world — well down on the top slot it’s become accustomed to.

Professor Ruut Veenhoven, author of a new “life satisfaction index” and a leading academic expert on happiness, has used data from recent surveys that found Ireland topping the table in quality of life to find out how happy it really is.

“Ireland is a wealthy democratic country which has developed economically,” he said. “It’s also small and typically we see that the average happiness level is higher in small countries, probably because democracy functions on a smaller scale.”

According to Veenhoven, a sociologist at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, people in Ireland are happy because of the healthy economy and good standard of living. This finding dispels the myth that people who live in colder countries cannot be as happy as those in warmer climates, he said.

“We would expect Mediterranean countries and tropical islands to feel better, but the data shows otherwise. If you analyse the effect of the weather, you typically see that we feel best in the so-called moderate climate zones like Ireland. So you actually feel worse in the warmer tropical areas and even worse in the colder polar areas,” he said.

Veenhoven used data from the World Values Survey of 100,000 people in 90 countries who were asked, on a scale of one to 10, how happy they were. He then modified the average according to “equality of happiness”. Nations with wide differences between the happiest and saddest citizens were pushed down the rankings.

This left Ireland in sixth place after Malta, which topped the table, followed by Denmark, Switzerland and Colombia as joint-second, with Iceland in fifth place.

Consumer confidence dipped in Ireland towards the end of last year, largely due to worries over fuel prices, wages and jobs, according to economic research by IIB Bank and the Economic and Social Research Institute.

With migration keeping wage increases to a minimum, consumers were not experiencing any rise in their standard of living, while they were also fretting over higher oil, petrol and gas prices.

This year would appear to have started on a happier note, however, with consumer spending back on track. Retailers across the country reported January sales figures as the highest in 30 years.

The trend will continue later this year when thousands of people are in line for a cash bonanza from their Special Savings Investment Accounts (SSIAs) which are due to yield a total of €16 billion.

Recent surveys suggest that life in the republic has never been so good. In November 2004, the Economist magazine named Ireland as the best place to live in the world. The country also came out top in the world quality-of-life index, with 42% of Irish people describing themselves as being “very happy”. In the World Values Survey life satisfaction index for 2004, Ireland came second overall.

The roll call of happy tidings continued with last year’s Dublin-based European Foundation for the Improvement for Living and Working Conditions reporting that Irish people are considerably more optimistic and more satisfied with life than the average European. The research also judged happiness levels and found Ireland to be joint-second in Europe, with Finland, after Denmark.

In Veenhoven’s research, Ireland still performs significantly better in the rankings than Britain. It was below 20 other nations, including far poorer countries such as Uruguay, Mexico, Ghana and Colombia.

Latin American countries such as Colombia, which is riven by civil war, and Uruguay are nearly 10% happier despite their relative poverty, higher levels of crime and stark inequalities. Veenhoven, whose research is published in Britain this month in the Journal of Happiness Studies, believes the strength of family outweighs the elements of misery.

“I was surprised to see countries such as Mexico ranking so highly,” he said. “But Latin America is know for its warm family ties, the way of life, and enjoyment of festivals and the particular brand of Catholicism, all of which contribute to people’s happiness.”

Experts believe a combination of the “rat race” of rising working hours and the decline of traditional families and communities has resulted in happiness levels reaching a plateau in Britain.

“Happiness has a ceiling,” said Veenhoven. “The relation between money and happiness is subject to the law of diminishing returns. Once you earn more than $10,000 (€8,200) per head in a country it levels off.”

The idea that money does not create happiness is supported by a growing body of evidence. Research by Andrew Oswald, an economics professor at Warwick University, has found that marriage has a bigger impact on how long someone lives than income.

He said: “Once you have enough to fill your refrigerator, happiness is relative.”

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