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Money, so the Beatles famously informed us in the spring of 1964, wont buy you love. But can it buy you a reasonable level of happiness? And if it can, how much will it cost?

These are two of the questions answered in a new piece of research that tries to gauge the price of a satisfied life and how it varies according to where you live. While some of the findings unearthed by financial advice site Expensivity are unlikely to raise too many eyebrows particularly the theme that the more developed the country, the more it takes to have a comfortable existence within it the study does serve up some intriguing points.

The survey combines data on the varying strength of national currencies using purchasing power parity (PPP) figures from the World Bank (PPP reaches its conclusions by comparing the cost of widely available items, such as a can of a specific soft drink or an international fast-food chains best-selling burger in different territories) with the local cost of living to produce a ranking of countries by the price of happiness.

Of course, that phrase needs further explanation. The figures revealed are not the annual income needed to be happy in a country per se, but the point of satiation the amount at which you have achieved maximum quality of life, and money has no further capacity to make you happier. In the case of Bermuda which, perhaps unsurprisingly, tops the table the pertinent statistic is US$143,933 (103,765) per annum. In Australia, which is ranked second, the figure is $135,321 (97,556). In Israel (third), it is $130,457 (94,049). Switzerland, in fourth, is Europes top-ranked country, at $128,969 (92,977).

If these sound like the sort of high numbers, unattainable for many of us, which make you think it is impossible to buy happiness, the figures for the lower end of the scale are also instructive. The country where happiness is cheapest is Suriname the former Dutch colony on the north-east shoulder of South America, and the smallest state on the continent in question. Here, $6,799 (4,901) is the financial satiation point for happiness. However, the survey also says, the average Surinamese yearly income is $5,500 (3,965).

Read more:Discovering South Americas forgotten corner, a land of walking trees and evil spirits

The survey is perhaps most interesting where it throws up some regional inconsistencies.

The highest ranked country in Africa is Libya, where the cost of security in a country that has been strafed by conflict for the last decade equates to a personal-happiness figure of $58,191 (41,951) compared to $36,916 (26,613) in the desert states westerly neighbour Tunisia, and $31,634 (22,806) in Egypt, directly to the east. The lowest-ranked country on the continent is Angola where $8,921 (6,431) buys you happiness (although figures arent given for Morocco, Sudan, South Sudan, Zimbabwe or Somalia).

Perhaps the biggest discrepancy is in South America, where another pair of neighbours have starkly contrasting results. Remarkably, Argentina is ranked as the nation with the second lowest price of happiness on the continent (after Suriname), at $8,778 (6,328) where Uruguay, its colleague across the River Plate, is the highest, at $20,927 (15,086). Again, the jigsaw is incomplete with troubled Venezuela also missing from the picture.

In Europe, the UK ($91,940/66,281) is out-ranked by Norway ($114,147/82,291), as well as Switzerland, Iceland, Holland, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. The European nation with the lowest price of happiness is easterly Ukraine ($11,301/8,147) while the lowest in Asia is Kyrgyzstan, at $8,997 (6,486).

Read more:
From Suriname to Ukraine, these are the countries where happiness costs the least - Telegraph.co.uk