Finland ranks world’s happiest country for 6th year in a row

Finland has been ranked as the happiest country in the word for the sixth consecutive year, according to the latest report of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network 2023 a global initiative of the United Nations published on Monday.

As in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022, Finland again takes the top spot as the happiest country in the world, said the report published marking the International Day of Happiness.

Another Nordic country Denmark secured the second place on the list, followed by Iceland, Israel, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg and New Zealand.

Afghanistan ranked at the very bottom of the list of 137 countries, followed by Lebanon, Sierra Leone,, Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo, Botswana, Malawi, Comoros, Tanzania and Zambia.

The report takes a closer look at the trends of how happiness is distributed, in many cases unequally, among people, said Sustainable Development Solutions Network in a press release.

It examines the happiness gap between the top and the bottom halves of the population. This gap is small in countries where almost everyone is very unhappy, and in the top countries where almost no one is unhappy.

More generally, people are happier living in countries where the happiness gap is smaller. Happiness gaps globally have been fairly stable, although there are growing gaps in many African countries, the press release added.

“Average happiness and our country rankings, for emotions as well as life evaluations, have been remarkably stable during the three COVID-19 years,” said John Helliwell, Professor of Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia.

“Changes in rankings that have taken place have been continuations of longer-term trends, such as the increases seen in the rankings of the three Baltic countries. Even during these difficult years, positive emotions have remained twice as prevalent as negative ones, and feelings of positive social support twice as strong as those of loneliness.”