According to the United Nations, Malta is becoming happier. In the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network's 2015 World Happiness Report, released this week, Malta is the world's 37th most happy country, up 11 places from the 2013 report.
The report aims to compare the subjective happiness of countries around the world, based on GDP per capita, social support levels, freedom to make life choices, generosity, perception of corruption and dystopia.
Malta was also found to be the European Union's 13-happiest country, while northern Europe took the EU's top spots in the happiness rankings. The EU's happiest countries, according to the report, are Denmark (overall third), Finland (sixth), The Netherlands (seventh) and Sweden (eighth).
The EU's most miserable country was found to be Bulgaria, which was ranked globally in 134th place.
Switzerland topped the annual index, closely followed by Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Canada.
Togo, Burundi, Benin and Rwanda, with civil-war wracked Syria, were the world's least happy countries.
The World Happiness Report examined 158 countries and is aimed at influencing government policy. The study bases its rankings on data from the Gallup World Poll and takes into account variables such as real GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, corruption levels and social freedoms.
"Increasingly, happiness is considered a proper measure of social progress and goal of public policy," the report said. "A rapidly increasing number of national and local governments are using happiness data and research in their search for policies that could enable people to live better lives."