Paraguay Happiest Country In World According To Gallup Poll; See Which Other Latin American Countries Made List

When it comes to happiness, Latin America seems to know a thing or two about achieving it.

According to the findings of a recent Gallup poll on well-being, Paraguay is the happiest country in the world with 87 percent of its population scoring high on the index of positive emotions. In fact, the top seven countries are Latin American nations, as Paraguay is followed by Panama (86 percent), Guatemala (83 percent), Nicaragua (83 percent), Ecuador (83 percent), Costa Rica (82 percent), and Colombia (82 percent).

"Of the 10 countries in the world with the highest percentages experiencing all of these positive emotions, all but one of them is in Latin America," wrote Gallup. "For the third year in a row, Paraguay led the world in positive emotions, with Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Ecuador rounding out the top five in 2013. That so many people are reporting positive emotions in Latin America at least partly reflects the cultural tendency in the region to focus on the positives in life."

The United States -- according to Pew Research Center, there are almost 52 million Hispanics/Latinos in America -- ranked in the top one-quarter with 78 percent on the index, tying with Chile, Argentina and Sweden.

"We know in Latin America culturally, there are a lot of highly positive emotions," said Jon Clifton, managing director of the Gallup World Poll, to NBC News. "It is a pretty emotional culture."

The findings of Gallup survey support the conclusions of a 156-nation survey by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network -- titled the 2013 World Happiness Report -- which found that Latin America showed the most improvement and thus, the most potential for becoming the happiest region in the world.

"Among the 130 countries, we focus here on those whose average evaluations have changed by half a point on the zero to 10 scale," the report reads. "Of these 32 countries, 19 saw improvements, and 13 showed decreases. Over half (10) of the countries with increased happiness were in Latin America and the Caribbean."

The Gallup survey questions 1,000 adults in 138 countries about whether they feel rested, whether they felt they were treated with respect, whether they laughed or smiled a lot, whether they felt enjoyment, and whether they learned or took part in something interesting the day before. The answers to the five questions is then used to generate a Positive Experience Index score for each country.