According to the report, released yesterday at the United Nations at an event celebrating International Day of Happiness, Malaysia is now the fourth happiest country in Asia.

However, against the other 155 countries surveyed, Malaysia ranks 42, an improvement of five places from last year’s survey.

The World Happiness Report was inaugurated in 2012 and this year’s is the fifth report to come out, as it continues to gain global recognition.

This is due to governments, organisations and civil society increasingly using happiness indicators to inform their policy-making decisions. In addition to the rankings, this year’s report includes an analysis of happiness in the workplace.

The World Happiness Report is produced by the Sustainable Solutions Network and relies on data gathered by the Gallup World Poll.

Singapore continues to top the ranks in Asia with Thailand and Taiwan in second and third place, respectively. However, as far as its global position is concerned, Singaporeans are a slightly unhappier lot than they were last year.

That is because its world ranking dropped four places from 22 to 26 this year. Like Malaysia, Thailand improved by one to 32 from 33, and Taiwan (33 from 42).

According to the report, the top 10 happiest places are almost the same as that of last year with Norway topping the poll again.

Its European neighbours Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland are placed second, third and fourth, respectively.

“All of the top four countries rank highly on all the main factors found to support happiness: caring, freedom, generosity, honesty, health, income and good governance,” the report said.

Countries are ranked using three-year averages of data collected with the latest report covering 2014-2016, with 3,000 respondents from each country giving a rating on their life evaluations.

At the opposite end, Africa is the continent with the three most unhappiest countries, according to the report. They are Central African Republic, Burundi and Tanzania.