According to an annual World Happiness Report sponsored by the UN and released on Wednesday, Finland has continued to be the happiest nation in the world for seven years running.
Additionally, the Nordic nations maintained their rankings among the top ten happy nations, with Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden lagging behind Finland.
Afghanistan remained at the bottom of the 143 countries surveyed, wracked by a humanitarian crisis ever since the Taliban retook power in 2020.
The United States and Germany, which came in 23rd and 24th place, respectively, were not among the top 20 happiest countries for the first time since the report’s publication more than ten years ago.
In turn, Costa Rica and Kuwait entered the top 20 at 12 and 13.
The report noted the happiest countries no longer included any of the world’s largest countries.
“In the top 10 countries only the Netherlands and Australia have populations over 15 million. In the whole of the top 20, only Canada and the UK have populations over 30 million.”
Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Jordan saw the worst declines in happiness between 2006 and 2010, while Serbia, Bulgaria, and Latvia saw the largest rises.
The self-assessed assessments of life satisfaction by individuals, along with GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and corruption, are the basis for the happiness ranking.
