Bhubaneswar: Finland continues to occupy the top spot of the Happiest Country for the fifth year in a row based on the World Happiness Report 2022 with a score of 7.821 out of a total possible score of 10.
Denmark continues to occupy second place, with Iceland up from 4th place last year to 3rd this year. Switzerland is 4th, followed by the Netherlands and Luxembourg, stated the report.
The ten countries that witnessed the largest drops are Lebanon, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Jordan, Zambia, India, Mexico, and Botswana with Afghanistan ranked as the unhappiest.
The World Happiness Report, now in its 10th year, is based on individuals’ own assessments of their lives. Happiness rankings are based on life evaluations as the more stable measure of the quality of people’s lives.
The happiness score takes account of six key variables: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and freedom from corruption.
This year the authors also used data from social media to compare people’s emotions before and after the Covid-19 pandemic. They found “strong increases in anxiety and sadness” in 18 countries but a fall in feelings of anger.
Overall levels of life evaluations have been fairly stable during two years of COVID-19, matched by modest changes in the global rankings, stated the report.
