The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness. The World Happiness Report 2016 ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels.

Report editors:

John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard, and Jeffrey D. Sachs

Chapters and their authors:

• Chapter 1: Setting the stage
  Authors: John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard, Jeffrey D. Sachs
• Chapter 2: The Distribution of World Happiness
  John F. Helliwell, Haifang Huang, Shun Wang
• Chapter 3: Promoting Happiness Ethics: The Greatest Happiness Principle
  Richard Layard
• Chapter 4: Happiness and Sustainable Development: Concepts and Evidence
  Jeffrey Sachs

Editor's note:

This report was released in two volumes. This publication, Volume 1 (update), contains the first three chapters. Volume 2 (special Rome edition) is a companion volume containing five research papers for presentation at the 2016 launch conference in Rome.