Finland is a happy place! For the sixth year in a row, the country has been named the happiest in the world in the annual World Happiness Report 2023.
The Nordic country and its neighbors Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Norway all score very well on the measures the report uses to explain its findings: healthy life expectancy, GDP per capita, social support, low corruption, generosity in a community where people look after each other and freedom to make key life decisions.
The World Happiness Report ranks global happiness in more than 150 countries around the world and is published every year on March 20, which has been established as the International Day of Happiness.
Global happiness has not taken a hit in the three years of the Covid-19 pandemic. Life evaluations from 2020 to 2022 have been “remarkably resilient,” the report says, with global averages basically in line with the three years preceding 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,” John Helliwell, one of the authors of the World Happiness Report said in a news release.
The report identifies the happiest nations, those at the very bottom of the happiness scale and everything in between, plus the factors that tend to lead to greater happiness.
Taking a holistic view of the well-being of all the components of a society and its members makes for better life evaluations and happier countries.
“The objective of every institution should be to contribute what it can to human well-being,” the report says, which includes accounting for future generations and preserving basic human rights.
Israel moves up to No. 4 this year from its No. 9 ranking last year. The Netherlands (No. 5), Switzerland (No. 8), Luxembourg (No. 9) and New Zealand (No. 10) round out the top 10.
Australia (No. 12), Canada (No. 13), Ireland (No. 14), the United States (No. 15) and the United Kingdom (No. 19) all made it into the top 20.
While the same countries tend to appear in the top 20 year after year, there’s a new entrant this year: Lithuania.
The Baltic nation has been climbing steadily over the past six years from No. 52 in 2017 to No. 20 on the latest list. And the other Baltic countries, Estonia (No. 31) and Latvia (No. 41), have been climbing in the ranks, too.
Greece in the World Happiness Report
Greece is in 58th place in the new World Happiness Index 2023 which evaluates countries for the period 2020-2022.
In the previous publication of the Index that was made last year and covered the period 2019-2021, Greece was again in the same position.
Countries such as Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Hungary, El Salvador and Brazil are considered happier nations than Greece. Conversely, lower in the ranking are Thailand, Mongolia, Vietnam, and Moldova.
Greece was rated this year with 5,931 points, compared to the 7,804 of Finland in first place.
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