Happiness isn’t an easy thing to measure, but one company has attempted the impossible.
Hoppa, an airport transfer company, measured the number of Instagram posts using the word “happy” from 1 January 2017 until 17 March 2017 to determine which cities in Europe and England were happiest.
While not the most scientific method in the world, the test did throw up some interesting results.
The five “happiest” cities in England weren’t necessarily the biggest or busiest.
London failed to make the cut, as did Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds.
In fact, the number one spot went to Preston in Lancashire.
Number two went to Ipswich (although it’s not technically a city having failed to gain city status on several attempts, third place was Ely, Hereford was fourth and Leicester came in fifth.
However, whether these places just happen to have particularly positive Instagram users or whether they genuinely are happier is something we may never know.
Hoppa also measured this data for European cities – the UK’s capital just made the top 10.
Top 10 happiest European cities
- Zagreb, Croatia
- Sofia, Bulgaria
- Tallinn, Estonia
- Valletta, Malta
- Copenhagen, Denmark
- Oslo, Norway
- Helsinki, Finland
- Tbilisi, Georgia,
- Monaco, Monaco
- London, United Kingdom
This comes after Express.co.uk reported on the countries with the hardest workers in the world.
Comparatively speaking, Britons are working far fewer hours per year than many other nationalities.
According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the UK is 26th in the world in terms of the number of hours we work on average in a year – 1,674.
The top spot is reserved for Mexico, where people work a whopping 2,246 hours annually.
