Finland again Named Happiest Country in the World, India at 139 Behind Pakistan at 105

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, March 18: Finland has been named the world’s happiest country for the fifth year running, in an annual UN-sponsored index that again ranked Afghanistan as the unhappiest, followed closely by Lebanon.

India has been ranked 139 out of 149 countries in the list of UN World Happiness Report 2021. In 2019, India was ranked 140th. Pakistan comparatively was happier being ranked at 105^th, Bangladesh on 101st and China on 84th, according to the report.

Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania recorded the biggest boosts in wellbeing. The largest falls in the World Happiness Table, released on Friday, came in for Lebanon, Venezuela and Afghanistan. Lebanon, which is facing economic meltdown, fell to second from last on the index of 146 nations, just below Zimbabwe.

Finland, the happiest country was closely followed by Iceland, Denmark, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and Norway. From the bttom, marginally better than Afghanistan were Zimbabwe (148), Rwanda (147), Botswana (146) and Lesotho (145).

The happiness study ranks the countries of the world on the basis of questions from the Gallup World Poll. The results are then correlated with other factors, including GDP and social security. The United States ranks at 19th place for happiness, despite being one of the richest countries in the world.

Overall, the index showed little change in happiness levels compared to last years’ report, which was based on information from before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Here’s the list of top 20 World’s happiest countries of 2021:

1. Finland
2. Demark
3. Switzerland
4. Iceland
5. The Netherlands
6. Norway
7. Sweden
8. Luxembourg
9. New Zealand
10. Austria
11. Australia
12. Israel
13. Germany
14. Canada
15. Ireland
16. Costa Rica
17. United Kingdom
18. The Czech Republic
19. United States
20. Belgium

War-traumatised Afghanistan, already bottom of the table, has seen its humanitarian crisis deepen since the Taliban took power again last August. UN agency UNICEF estimates one million children under five could die of hunger this winter if not aided. “This (index) presents a stark reminder of the material and immaterial damage that war does to its many victims,” co-author Jan-Emmanuel De Neve said.

The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness that ranks 149 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be.

The World Happiness Report 2021 focuses on the effects of Covid-19 and how people all over the world have fared.

The annual report ranks nations based on gross domestic product per person, healthy life expectancy and the opinions of residents. Surveys ask respondents to indicate on a 1-10 scale how much social support they feel they have if something goes wrong, their freedom to make their own life choices, their sense of how corrupt their society is and how generous they are.

“Our aim was two-fold, first to focus on the effects of COVID-19 on the structure and quality of people’s lives, and second to describe and evaluate how governments all over the world have dealt with the pandemic. In particular, we try to explain why some countries have done so much better than others,” it said in a statement.

“There have been both in-person and telephone samples for India, with the in-person responses being lower than telephone responses, while significantly higher than in-person responses in 2019. Hence the reversal in 2020 of the longer-term slide in Indian life evaluations was not attributable to mode effects,” it added.

The World Happiness Report, now in its 10th year, is based on people’s own assessment of their happiness, as well as economic and social data. It assigns a happiness score on a scale of zero to 10, based on an average of data over a three-year period. This latest edition was completed before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

As well as a personal sense of wellbeing, based on Gallup polls in each country, the happiness score takes account of GDP, social support, personal freedom and levels of 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.

“The lesson of the World Happiness Report over the years is that social support, generosity to one another and honesty in government are crucial for wellbeing,” report co-author Jeffrey Sachs wrote. “World leaders should take heed.”

The report had raised some eyebrows when it first placed Finland at the top of its listings in 2018. Many of the Nordic country’s 5.5 million people describe themselves as taciturn and prone to melancholy, and admit to eyeing public displays of joyfulness with suspicion. But the country of vast forests and lakes is also known for its well-functioning public services, ubiquitous saunas, widespread trust in authority and low levels of crime and inequality.