Finland has been named the happiest country in the world in the annual World Happiness Report. This is the sixth consecutive year they have won the coveted award due to high scores on factors the report uses to measure happiness: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity and low corruption. The report was released on Monday (March 20), which is celebrated as International Day of Happiness. India ranks 125 based on the various parameters of happiness.
The World Happiness Report is a publication of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and is based on global survey data from people in more than 150 countries, according to DailyExpertNews.
This year’s list is similar to previous rankings with many Scandinavian countries in the top positions. While Denmark is number 2, Iceland is number 3.
“The Nordic countries deserve special attention in light of their generally high levels of both personal and institutional trust. They also had COVID-19 mortality rates only a third higher than elsewhere in Western Europe in 2020 and 2021- 27 per 100,000 in the Nordic countries compared to 80 in the rest of Western Europe,” the report’s authors said in the document.
Speak against DailyExpertNewssaid one of the authors John Helliwell, “Benevolence towards others, especially helping strangers, which increased dramatically in 2021, remained high in 2022.”
“Even during these difficult years, positive emotions have remained twice as prevalent as negative ones, and feelings of positive social support twice as strong as those of loneliness,” the author added.
India, one of the fastest growing economies, is ranked 126 in the report, behind Nepal, China, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Interestingly, the war between Russia and Ukraine caused a drop in the rankings of both countries. While Russia ranks 72nd, Ukraine ranks 92nd.