Hallo, vibrant friends, and welcome to today’s Healthy Living, featuring an exploration into the joyful lives of children in the Netherlands.

Recent studies have shown that Dutch children are the happiest in the world. In 2007, the United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF, conducted a comprehensive survey on the living conditions of children in 21 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, all of which are located either in Europe or North America.

The results showed that the Dutch children surveyed expressed the most satisfaction with their lives among youngsters of all nations included in the study.

The Netherlands also ranked in the top ten of all included countries with respect to the five other measures of child well-being, which included material well-being and the strength of children’s relationships with friends and parents.

After a large-scale investigation of over 200,000 children in 41 countries in Europe and North America, World Health Organization (WHO) researchers also concluded that Dutch kids are the most content of all children in Western countries.

Why are young people in the Netherlands so happy? Today we will attempt to answer this question.