Digital Media Center
Bryant-Denny Stadium, Gate 61
Box 870370
920 Paul Bryant Drive
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0370
205-348-6644

© 2026 Alabama Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Free performance tickets! Sponsored by our partners. Click here to see active APR Giveaways.

How To Measure Happiness

NPR

Happiness — it's something that most of us would say we seek in life, and there's plenty of differing opinion about what makes human beings happy: could it be love? Or family and friendships? Maybe it's money!

The latest World Happiness Report offers some clues. It measures a country's happiness in six parts. Luckily for the U.S., one of those factors is Gross Domestic Product, or GDP; the sum of the goods and services a country produces. GDP can be seen as a broad metric for a country's wealth, and the U.S. is top of the list when it comes to GDP rankings. On the World Happiness Report, however, the U.S. is ranked 19 — so what else goes into a country's happiness, and which nations are at the top of the list?

Music: Dust & Bones and Jet Set Go. Find us: Twitter/ Facebook / Instagram

Subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, PocketCasts and NPR One.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.
Cardiff Garcia is a co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money podcast, along with Stacey Vanek Smith. He joined NPR in November 2017.
News from Alabama Public Radio is a public service in association with the University of Alabama. We depend on your help to keep our programming on the air and online. Please consider supporting the news you rely on with a donation today. Every contribution, no matter the size, propels our vital coverage. Thank you.