The Wellbeing Research Centre has released its annual World Happiness Report, ranking the happiest countries in the world. How did yours fare?
The report, which analyzes over 100,000 people’s responses from more than 140 countries, ranks countries based on inhabitants’ perceived quality of life on a scale of zero to 10, with 10 meaning they’re living their most ideal life imaginable.
Up in the top spots are the usual Nordic contenders: Finland takes the top spot (for the eighth successive year), followed by Denmark, Iceland and Sweden, with Norway joining them in seventh. Nearby European neighbours include the Netherlands in fifth and Luxembourg in ninth. Less typical top 10 countries include Costa Rica in sixth and Mexico in 10th - both entering the top 10 for the very first time, and bumping the likes of Australia (11th) and Switzerland (13th) out of the upper echelons.
‘Nordic countries like Finland continue to benefit from universally available and high-quality health, education and social support systems. Inequality of wellbeing is also low,’ says Ilana Ron-Levey, managing director at Gallup. But state welfare systems aren’t the only thing cheering Nordic people up: it’s the people, too.
It’s all about community and relationships, the World Happiness Report’s editorial board says - and that’s why countries like Mexico and Costa Rica, for example, are so much happier than the US despite being much less wealthy.
Researchers examined a country’s GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, perceptions of corruption, freedom, and more to help explain the findings. However, this year, they paid particular attention to another key happiness predictor: Benevolence. For the first time, the report took into account someone’s trust that a lost wallet would be returned in their country.
John F. Helliwell - an economist at the University of British Columbia and a founding editor of the World Happiness Report - is a long-time lost wallet researcher. The idea is that, if you drop your wallet in the street and someone picks it up and gives it back to you, the likelihood is, the nation has a higher sense of happiness. ‘The wallet data are so convincing because they confirm that people are much happier living where they think people care about each other,’ Helliwell says.
Sharing meals is important for wellbeing across the globe, and household size is closely linked to happiness, too, with the happiest people in Mexico living in homes of four to five people. The same is true in Costa Rica, which enters the top 10 for the first time in sixth place.
Rankings from 11th to 25th were:
Australia
New Zealand
Switzerland
Belgium
Ireland
Lithuania
Austria
Canada
Slovenia
Czechia
UAE
Germany
UK
USA
Belize