Since 2012, most human beings on Earth have been awakened to the fact that there are entire nations of people who are measurably happier than they are! This uplifting annual reminder is known as the World Happiness Report, published by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Thanks to *Bhutan’s prime minister at the time, Jigme Thinley, encouraged the organisation’s member countries to better incorporate well-being into measurements of social and economic development. His recommendation inspired the first World Happiness Report.
The good news is this year’s report found remarkable worldwide growth in all three acts of kindness monitored in the Gallup World Poll. “Helping strangers, volunteering and donations in 2021 were strongly up in every part of the world, reaching levels almost 25% above their pre-pandemic prevalence,” says John Helliwell, professor at the University of British Columbia and the editor of the World Happiness Report. Some other good news, despite the pandemic: “Positive emotions as a whole remained more than twice as frequent as negative ones,” says Helliwell.
World’s happiest nation is Nordic
For the fifth year in a row, Finland is the world’s happiest country, rankings based largely on life evaluations from the Gallup World Poll. The Nordic country and its neighbours Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland all score very well on the measures the report uses to explain its findings: healthy life expectancy, GDP per capita, social support in times of trouble, low corruption and high social trust, generosity in a community where people look after each other and freedom to make key life decisions.
So what makes Finland so happy? “Research shows that high national ranking on these surveys is not so much about culture. It’s more about how a country’s institutions take care of their people—this leads to higher ratings of life satisfaction,” says Aalto University expert Frank Martela, a philosopher and the author of the book A Wonderful Life – Insights on Finding a Meaningful Experience (HarperCollins 2020) translated into 24 languages, including French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Korean, and Indonesian.. Other factors contributing to Finland’s success include smart urban planning and access to green spaces to reduce stress and promotes physical activity, an effective system of progressive taxation and strong healthcare and education systems. Curiously, Finland shares a border with Russia, marking a grim reality during a time of war: the happiest country set alongside one of the unhappiest. Russia came in at number 80 on the list.
Denmark comes in at No. 2 in this year’s rankings, followed by Iceland at No. 3. Switzerland and the Netherlands and Luxembourg take places 4 through 6, Sweden and Norway are seventh and eighth, respectively. With Israel coming in at No. 9 and New Zealand rounding out the top 10. Featured in the top 20 is Canada (No. 15), the United States (No. 16) and the United Kingdom (No. 17) though France reached its highest ranking to date, at number 20.
The World Happiness Report— ranks global happiness in more than 150 countries around the world— statisticians base the ranking on data from the Gallup World Poll and several other factors, including levels of GDP, life expectancy and more. With the world entering the third year of the pandemic, the report had three areas of focus in 2022: looking back; looking at how people and countries are doing in the face of Covid-19; and looking ahead to how the science of well-being is likely to evolve in the future.
World’s saddest nation is Afghanistan (not forgetting war-torn Ukraine at this time)
Besides the happiest countries in the world, the report also looked at the places where people are the saddest. Afghanistan ranked as the unhappiest countries in the world, with Lebanon, Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Botswana rounding out the bottom five. Country comparisons make things worse unless we lift each other up. Thankfully happiness is contagious and if the world actively engages in critical issues for the greater good of all of humanity such as equal vaccine distribution, limit the supply of military weapons, then those countries ranked lower on the World Happiness Report might have a chance to improve their lot in life that will allow them time to focus on issues such as satisfaction and wellbeing, i.e. much higher even on Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, one of the best-known theories of motivation. Maslow’s theory states that our actions are motivated by certain physiological needs. It is often represented by a pyramid of needs, with the most basic needs at the bottom and more complex needs at the top. Abraham Maslow, a humanist, first introduced the concept of a hierarchy of needs in his 1943 paper titled “A Theory of Human Motivation,” and again in his subsequent book, Motivation and Personality. This hierarchy suggests that people are motivated to fulfil basic needs before moving on to other, more advanced needs.
* The World Happiness Report, and much of the growing international interest in happiness, as documented in Chapter 3, exists thanks to Bhutan. They sponsored Resolution 65/309, “Happiness: Towards a holistic approach to development,” adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 19 July 2011, inviting national governments to “give more importance to happiness and well-being in determining how to achieve and measure social and economic development.”
Join the launch of the world happiness report here, 18th March 2022 https://worldhappiness.report/
With the world in a state of upheaval, we could all use some happy news in 2022.
Happy International Happiness Day 20 March 2022
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