The report published on World Happiness website not only looks for individual happiness but also accounts for how happiness has been affected by changes in the quality of government. Happiness comes from within, Happiness is a choice that you make every minute of every day but there are some attributes that result in a nation’s happiness.
According to the website:
This year we shift our focus from the levels and distribution of well-being to consider their evolution over the years since the start of the Gallup World Poll. We now have twice as many years of coverage from the Gallup World Poll as were available for the first World Happiness Report in 2012. This gives us a better chance to see emerging happiness trends from 2005 through 2018, and to investigate what may have contributed to them.