The United Nations has released its annual World Happiness Report while the world is still struggling with the pandemic.
Each year, the United Nations releases its annual World Happiness Report and it turns out even with the COVID-19 pandemic, the results are pretty much the same. In 2020, Finland was found to be the happiest country in the world for the fourth consecutive year, with Iceland coming in second place. It seems cold weather doesn’t have a major effect on happiness!
United Nations Releases Annual World Happiness Report
Each year, the United Nations ranks 149 countries on a scale of how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be. However, this time the report concentrates on the effects of COVID-19 and how people around the world have coped with the pandemic. The report was released on the UN’s annual International Day of Happiness on March 20.
The report aimed to focus on the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the quality and structure of people’s lives. It also went on to describe and evaluate how governments around the world have handled the pandemic. The UN endeavored to also try to explain why some countries have been able to do so much better than others over the past, difficult year.
Finland came in the first place, with Iceland second and Denmark in third place.
Switzerland and the Netherlands came fourth and fifth on the report. Sweden came in sixth place, followed by Germany, Norway, New Zealand, and Austria. The US did move up four places from last year to come in at number 19, while the UK was listed at 14.
How Is Happiness Measured?
Each country was ranked on six key variables – per capita income, trust, freedom, social support, generosity, and healthy life expectancy.
The report was issued by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. It found that there has been surprising resilience in how people rate their lives overall. Many would imagine it would be doom and gloom worldwide, but it doesn’t seem to be the case at all.
Naturally, the worst effect of the COVID-19 pandemic was the two million deaths. On top of this, in most countries, there has been greater economic insecurity, with businesses forced to close down in many locations.
Generally, there has been a disruption in every aspect of life, causing anxiety and, for many people, stress and challenges to both mental and physical health. In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, emotions changed more than life satisfaction did. Obviously, this worsened during lockdown periods, but recovered faster once life reached a state of “new normal.”
The World Had No Overall Change In Positivity
There was no overall change in positivity in the world as a whole. However, there was roughly a 10 percent increase in the number of people who said they were sad or worried the previous day. According to the report, factors supporting successful COVID-19 strategies included confidence in public institutions. Other factors included whether the country had learned lessons from the SARS outbreak and other, earlier pandemics. Factors also included whether the head of government was a woman.
Check out where your country came in the list of the world’s happiest countries on the 9th World Happiness Report 2021 here.
Now you know which countries to visit to expect smiling faces on arrival!
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