FINLAND REMAINS HAPPIEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD FOR 7TH YEAR

Fri 22 March 2024:

Nordic countries kept their places among the 10 most cheerful, with Denmark, Iceland and Sweden trailing Finland.

Afghanistan, plagued by a humanitarian catastrophe since the Taliban regained control in 2020, stayed at the bottom of the 143 countries surveyed.

Compiled by using data from more than 140 countries, the report is published annually by Gallup, the United Nations, and the University of Oxford.

For the first time, the 2024 World Happiness Report has offered empirical data based on age, showing a worrying divergence in how happy young people are globally compared to older generations.

For the first time since the report was published more than a decade ago, the United States and Germany were not among the 20 happiest nations, coming in 23rd and 24th respectively.

In turn, Costa Rica and Kuwait entered the top 20 at 12 and 13.

However, Finland has been the happiest country in the world for seven consecutive years.

But rising unhappiness, especially among young people, has seen other Western countries drop down the UN-sponsored index, with the United States and Germany dropping out of the top 20 for the first time since the report’s first edition more than a decade ago.

The survey asks people in 143 countries and territories to evaluate their life on a scale from zero to 10, taking into account factors such as GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity and corruption.

Its release coincides with the International Day of Happiness on March 20.

How do you measure happiness?

The annual World Happiness Report rankings are largely based on subjective life evaluations compiled over the past three years from the Gallup World Poll in cooperation with the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

While the rankings themselves are based only on the answers people give when asked to rate their own lives, interdisciplinary experts from the fields of economics, psychology, and sociology are then called in to crunch the data and make evaluations based on six key variables.

The variables the report quantifies are income (GDP per capita), healthy life

expectancy, social support, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and freedom from corruption.

Growing inequality

Jennifer De Paola, a happiness researcher at the University of Helsinki in Finland, told AFP that Finns’ close connection to nature and healthy work-life balance were key contributors to their life satisfaction.

In addition, Finns may have a “more attainable understanding of what a successful life is”, compared to for example the United States where success is often equated with financial gain, she said.

Finns’ strong welfare society, trust in state authorities, low levels of corruption and free healthcare and education were also key.

“Finnish society is permeated by a sense of trust, freedom, and high level of autonomy,” De Paola said.

This year’s report also found that younger generations were happier than their older peers in most of the world’s regions — but not all.

Which countries were in the bottom 10?

Looking at the bottom 10 first, Afghanistan remains the world’s unhappiest country in a largely unchanged ranking.

134. Zambia

135. Eswatini

136. Malawi

137. Botswana

138. Zimbabwe

139. Congo

140. Sierra Leone

141. Lesotho

142. Lebanon

143. Afghanistan

Which countries were in the top 10?

Overall, this year’s top 10 rankings also remain largely unchanged, especially the top three. However, second place Denmark has managed to close the gap with Finland.

1. Finland

2. Denmark

3. Iceland

4. Sweden

5. Israel

6. Netherlands

7. Norway

8. Luxembourg

9. Switzerland

10. Australia

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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