Finland becomes World’s happiest country; India stands at 126

NEW DELHI: The United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network published the annual World Happiness Report on March 20, 2023. Finland tops the list as the happiest country in the world for the sixth consecutive year due to high scores in factors, including GDP per capita, social support, freedom, healthy life expectancy, generosity, and low corruption.

The report was released on the International Day of Happiness and is based on global survey data collected from more than 150 countries. According to the survey, the least happy countries are Afghanistan and Lebanon with average life evaluations more than five points lower (on a scale from 0 to 10) than the ten happiest countries.

The report ranked India at 126 out of 146 countries. Neighbouring nations like China, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh ranked 64^th, 78^th, 108^th, 112^th, and 118^th respectively. Even war-torn countries like Ukraine (72^nd) and Russia (92^nd) secured better ranks than India. The report stated that despite the war, these two countries did not take a hit on happiness, wellness, and benevolence.

India however, climbed up nine positions from last year. The report also stated that India, including the United States, Brazil, Egypt, France, Indonesia, and Mexico has the highest number of lonely people.

Among the emerging economies and developing countries, Lebanon recorded the highest usage of social media platforms (85 per cent) and India ranked the lowest (31 per cent) in the same category.  This has indicated a lower interaction among the citizens of the country which has dipped the happiness quotient.

The top rank has been mostly secured by Nordic countries with Denmark and Iceland securing second and third ranks. The authors of the report stated in the document, “The Nordic countries merit special attention in light of their generally high levels of both personal and institutional trust. They also had COVID-19 death rates only one-third as high as elsewhere in Western Europe during 2020 and 2021- 27 per 1,00,000 in the Nordic countries compared to 80 in the rest of Western Europe.”

John Helliwell, one of the authors of the report, spoke to CNN and said, “Benevolence to others, especially the helping of strangers, which went up dramatically in 2021, stayed 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 report has mentioned how the happiness quotient was measured. It stated that, that by asking a nationally-representative sample of people how satisfied they are with their lives these days. The report considered mental health, the quality of work, and family life and community for countries to rank higher. The report reveals, “A population will only experience high levels of overall life satisfaction if its people are also pro-social, healthy, and prosperous. In other words, its people must have high levels of what Aristotle called ‘eudaimonia’.”