Finland again ranks world’s happiest country despite pandemic
Finland again ranks
world’s happiest country despite pandemic
Covid-19 has done little to alter
the ranking of the world’s happiest countries, with Finland at the top for a
fourth year running, an annual UN-sponsored report said on Friday.
The researchers behind the World Happiness Report, now in its ninth year, used Gallup data asking people in 149 countries to rate their own happiness, also taking into account measures such as GDP, social support, personal freedom and levels of corruption to give each nation a happiness score, which is an average of the past three years. Once again, the top spots were dominated by European countries — with Denmark coming second, followed by Switzerland, Iceland and the Netherlands. New Zealand, falling one place to ninth, was again the only non-European nation in the top ten. Other climbers included Germany, up from 17th to 13th, and France, rising two to 21st.
The UK, meanwhile, fell from 13th to
17th place, while the US fell one spot to 19th. African nations Lesotho,
Botswana, Rwanda and Zimbabwe came at the bottom of the table, but ahead of
Afghanistan which was classed as the world’s unhappiest nation this year. The
authors also compared this year’s data to previous years’ averages to gauge the
impact of the pandemic, and found “significantly higher frequency of negative
emotions” in just over a third of the countries.
But positive emotions increased in
22 countries, and “surprisingly there was not, on average, a decline in
well-being when measured by people’s own evaluation of their lives,” John
Helliwell, one of the report’s compilers, said in a statement. “One possible
explanation is that people see Covid-19 as a common, outside threat affecting
everybody and that this has generated a greater sense of solidarity and
fellow-feeling.” Author Jeffrey Sachs meanwhile warned that “we need urgently
to learn from Covid-19,” adding that “we must aim for wellbeing rather than
mere wealth.” Finland, which throughout the health crisis has reported some of
Europe’s lowest incidences of the coronavirus, “ranked very high on the
measures of mutual trust that have helped to protect lives and livelihoods
during the pandemic,” the authors said. Finland’s top spot in the happiness
list has previously been met with raised eyebrows in the country whose
population of 5.5 million is said to shy away from spontaneous demonstrations
of joy, valuing instead the quiet and solitude of the country’s vast forests
and thousands of lakes. The northern country’s long dark winters were reputed
to be behind high levels of alcoholism and suicide, but a decade-long public
health drive has helped cut rates by more than half. Finland’s residents enjoy
a high quality of life, security and public services, with rates of inequality
and poverty among the lowest of all OECD countries.
Nigeria news paper
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