Finland has taken the top spot in the World Happiness Index for the fifth year in a row. Finland’s score in the World Happiness Report (2022) was “significantly ahead of other top ten countries.” Denmark was ranked second, ahead of Iceland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The lowest-ranking countries were Lebanon and Afghanistan.
This is Finland, a magazine published by the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stated that Finland, along with several Nordic countries, has worked to create a society with an “infrastructure of happiness.” “Social systems in Finland and the rest of the Nordics support democratic governance and human rights, not to mention free or very low-cost education and healthcare,” it continued.
According to the report, global benevolence increased by 25% in 2021 compared to pre-pandemic levels. This was fueled by stranger assistance, as well as strong increases in donations and volunteerism. Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Togo, Bahrain, Latvia, Benin, Guinea, and Armenia were the top ten countries with the greatest gains from 2008 to 2019. In the Index, India was ranked 136th out of 146 countries.
What is the World Happiness Report, and why is it important?
The World Happiness Report, a publication of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), uses survey data to determine how people in more than 150 countries evaluate their lives, according to its website. In plain English, the report lays out a framework for assessing people’s qualitative assessments of their lives, progress, and well-being using quantitative indicators.
The report aims to make discussions about happiness a priority among governments and academics in order to assess and set social and economic goals. In July 2011, the United Nations (UN) passed Resolution 65/309, titled “Happiness: Towards a Holistic Approach to Development.” They urged governments to place a greater emphasis on happiness and well-being as a means of achieving social and economic development.
Bhutan’s Royal Government convened a high-level meeting for global representatives in April 2012 to discuss wellbeing and happiness as a new economic paradigm. Bhutan’s Prime Minister Jigmi Y. Thinley accepted the recommendation to form a commission to investigate the matter. He suggested that the commission could be co-owned by the United Nations and run in conjunction with the Secretary-General. The first World Happiness Report, chaired by Mr. Thinley and Economist Jeffery D Sachs, was presented to review the evidence for the suggested theme of the meeting.
The United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 66/281 declaring March 20 as International Day of Happiness, which will be observed every year. Every year on the same day, the World Happiness Report is released. Bhutan has developed its own Gross National Happiness Index, which measures the population’s happiness and well-being using 33 indicators organized into nine domains.
The Procedure
In order to create the rankings (dubbed the World Happiness Index), secondary and survey data are combined. GDP per capita in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), healthy life expectancy at birth, level of social support, generosity, perceptions of corruption, and freedom to make life choices are among the parameters for evaluation.
The World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO) provide ready-to-use data for calculating life expectancy and GDP per capita, respectively. The other metrics are based on Gallup World Poll surveys. It typically reaches out to 1,000 people in a country each year. According to the surveyors, they are unable to contact many countries for the annual survey. The sample size increases to 3,000 in countries where annual surveys can be conducted on a regular basis.
Grading Operandi: The Cantrill Ladder grading Operandi is used to answer all questions about the respondent’s evaluation of their life. They are asked to visualize a ladder, with the best possible life being a ten and the worst possible life being a zero.
The sub-bars show how much each of the six factors could potentially contribute to each country’s life evaluations being higher than in ‘Dystopia.’ The surveys asked questions like “If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them, or not?” to assess social support. “Have you donated money to a charity in the last month?” the surveyors ask to gauge generosity.
Aside from that, the Index establishes a benchmark known as ‘Dystopia.’ “The goal of creating Dystopia was to create a benchmark against which all countries could be favorably compared (no country performs worse than Dystopia) in terms of each of the six key variables, allowing each sub-bar to be of positive (or zero, in six cases) width,” the report explains.
The report’s general conclusions
According to the latest report, most countries have seen a long-term moderate increase in stress, worry, and sadness, as well as a slight long-term decline in life enjoyment.
Separately, it was discovered that experiences of balance, peace and calm are more common in Western countries than in East Asian countries. In addition, western countries have higher levels of satisfaction. In almost every country, the majority of people prefer a calmer life to an exciting one, according to the report. “However, this preference is not stronger in Eastern countries than in other parts of the world. It is, however, particularly high in poorer countries, particularly in Africa, where actual calm is low,” according to the report.