Netherlands the fifth happiest country in the world; Finland still in 1st place
The Netherlands is back to being the fifth happiest country in the world, after a dip to sixth place on the World Happiness Report last year. Finland is again in the top position and Afghanistan is still at the bottom of the ranking. The United States didn’t make the top 20 for the second year in a row.
For this report, researchers from Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network surveyed people on their life satisfaction and looked at factors that impact well-being, like the gross national product per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and corruption in a country. They also looked at the level of benevolence in a country - how many people donate to charities, volunteer, or help strangers, for example.
Finland has topped the happiness ranking since 2018. According to the researchers, the Finns feel a strong connection with nature and have a strong social system. Afghanistan has been the unhappiest country in the world since the Taliban seized power and stripped virtually all rights from women and girls.
America ranked in 24th place this year, a three-spot drop from last year. Various factors caused this fall, including that Americans increasingly eat alone while eating a meal together is known to improve well-being. There are also more “deaths of despair” - from suicide or drug use, for example - in the United States, while this number is decreasing in many other countries.
In the Netherlands, and several other Western European countries, the growth rate when it comes to deaths of despair is positive, “but very close to zero,” the researchers wrote.
The report is based on a three-year average, meaning that events in one year don’t have an immediate effect.
