The World’s Happiest Countries Revealed for 2023
Want to get instantly happy? Take a flight to Helsinki.
For the sixth year in a row, according to the World Happiness Report, Finland is the world’s happiest country.
We guess there’s something to be said for the Nordic countries.
“Benevolence to others, especially the helping of strangers, which went up dramatically in 2021, stayed high in 2022,” John Helliwell, one of the authors of the World Happiness Report, said in an interview with CNN.
The happiness even held up during the pandemic.
“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,” Helliwell addedHelliwell stated that despite the challenging times, positive emotions have been twice as common as negative ones, and individuals have experienced feelings of positive social support that are twice as powerful as those of loneliness..
The United States is generally happy but is well down on the list.
1. Finland
2. Denmark
3. Iceland
4. Israel
5. Netherlands
6. Sweden
7. Norway
8. Switzerland
9. Luxembourg
10. New Zealand
11. Austria
12. Australia
13. Canada
14. Ireland
15. United States
16. Germany
17. Belgium
18. Czech Republic
19. United Kingdom
20. Lithuania
The World Happiness Report rankings are largely based on life evaluations from the Gallup World Poll.
The six key variables the report quantifies are income (GDP per capita), social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and freedom from corruption. And the most common question to measure people’s well-being is: “Overall, how satisfied are you with your life these days?” To answer, people rely on a scale of 0-10 (0= completely dissatisfied, 10= completely satisfied).
“This year’s report features many interesting insights,” said Lara Aknin, co-author of the report, “but one that I find particularly interesting and heartening has to do with pro-sociality”.
The report had already recorded a global surge of benevolence in 2020 and 2021, following the pandemic. And according to 2022 data, people’s tendency to be kind, generous, and altruistic towards others was 25 per cent more common than before the pandemic.
This benevolent spirit was also recorded in countries such as Ukraine and Russia. In 2020 and 2021, both had experienced global increases in benevolence, said the report. During 2022, however, benevolence grew sharply in Ukraine but declined in Russia.
Interestingly, despite the devastating impact of the war in Ukraine, by September 2022, life evaluations remained higher than after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, which the report says is “supported now by a stronger sense of common purpose, benevolence, and trust in Ukrainian leadership”.
“The Russian invasion has forged Ukraine into a nation,” noted Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, co-editor of the report.
Source: https://bit.ly/40FdjIT
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