For the sixth consecutive year, this nation is once again the world’s happiest country

• Image Credit: Internet

• Mar 21, 2023 | Kabir Chakraborty

According to the report India ranks 125th out of 136 countries, making it one of the world's unhappiest countries. 

Digital Desk: The World Happiness Report has been released, and Finland has once again been named the world's happiest country. The World Happiness Report, published by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, ranks countries on happiness, which is further based on three preceding years' data of their average life evaluations. The report, which was released on International Day of Happiness, March 20, ranks global happiness based on survey data from people in over 150 countries.

According to the ranking, which is based on data from sources such as the Gallup World Poll, many of the same Nordic countries are in the top spots as in previous years. Denmark is ranked second, with Iceland ranking third. The ranking measures happiness using six key factors: social support, income, health, freedom, generosity, and the absence of corruption.

The report's authors noted that Nordic countries deserve special attention due to their generally high levels of personal and institutional trust. "They also had COVID-19 death rates that were only one-third as high as the rest of Western Europe in 2020 and 2021-27 per 100,000 in the Nordic countries compared to 80 in the rest of Western Europe," they said.

Interestingly, unlike previous years, where same countries tend appear in the top 20, there’s a new entrant this year - Lithuania (at the 20th spot).

According to the report India ranks 125th out of 136 countries, making it one of the world's unhappiest countries. It even lags behind neighbouring countries such as Nepal, China, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. Afghanistan is ranked 137th at the bottom of the list.

In addition to ranking countries, the report examines the state of the world in 2023. "This year's report features many interesting insights," said Lara Aknin, one of the report's coauthors, in a press release. However, one that I find particularly intriguing and encouraging has to do with pro-sociality. For the second year in a row, we see that various forms of everyday kindness, such as helping a stranger, donating to charity, and volunteering, are higher than they were before the pandemic."

Stating that global happiness has not taken a hit in the three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the report added that life evaluations from 2020 to 2022 have been “remarkably resilient”, with global averages in line with the years preceding the pandemic.

Additionally, “Benevolence to others, especially the helping of strangers, which went up dramatically in 2021, stayed high in 2022,” said John Helliwell, one of the authors of the report.

Helliwell further noted that “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.”