STOCKHOLM (AP) – The coronavirus has brought a year of fear and anxiety, loneliness and confinement, illness and death, but an annual report on happiness around the world released on Friday suggests that the pandemic has not destroyed people’s spirits.
The editors of the 2021 World Happiness Report found that while emotions changed with the start of the pandemic, long-term satisfaction with life was less affected.
“What we found is that when people have a long-term view, they showed a lot of resilience in the past year,” said Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, one of the report’s co-authors in New York.
The annual report, produced by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, ranks 149 countries based on gross domestic product per person, healthy life expectancy and the opinions of residents. Surveys ask respondents to indicate, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much social support they think they have if something goes wrong, their freedom to make their own life choices, their sense of how corrupt their society is and how generous they are. are.
Due to the pandemic, surveys were conducted in just under 100 countries for this year’s World Happiness Report, the ninth compiled since the project began. Index ratings for other nations were based on previous data estimates.
The results of both methods made European countries occupy nine of the top ten places on the list of the happiest places in the world, with New Zealand completing the group. The top 10 countries are Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Austria.
It was the fourth consecutive year that Finland emerged victorious. The United States, which was in 13th place five years ago, fell from 18th to 19th place. In a short list that ranks only the countries surveyed, the USA ranked 14th.
“Year after year, we find that life satisfaction is considered to be happiest in the social democracies of northern Europe,” said Sachs. “People feel safe in these countries, so confidence is high. The government is seen as trustworthy and honest, and mutual trust is high. “
Finland’s comparative success in containing COVID-19 may have contributed to the lasting confidence that the country’s people have in their government. The country has taken swift and comprehensive measures to prevent the spread of the virus and has one of the lowest COVID-19 mortality rates in Europe.
“In Finland, too, of course, people have suffered,” said Anu Partanen, author of “The Nordic Theory of Everything” on Friday in Helsinki. “But then again, in Finland and the Nordic countries, people are very lucky because society still supports a system that protects these types of shocks.”
Overall, the index showed little change in happiness levels compared to last year’s report, which was based on information prior to the pandemic.
“We asked two types of questions. One is about life in general, assessing life, as we call it. How is your life? The other one is about mood, emotions, stress, anxiety ”, said Sachs. “Of course, we are still in the middle of a deep crisis. But the responses to the long-term assessment of life have not changed decisively, although the disruption in our lives has been so deep. “
Issues affecting the well-being of people living in the United States include racial tensions and growing income inequality between the wealthiest and the poorest residents, happiness experts say.
“As to why the United States ranks much lower than other similar or even less wealthy countries, the answer is straightforward,” said Carol Graham, an expert at The Brookings Institution who was not involved in the report. “The United States has greater differences in happiness ratings between rich and poor than most other rich countries.”
Report co-author Sonja Lyubormirsky, professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, noted that American culture values the signs of wealth, such as large houses and multiple cars, more than other countries, “and material things do not make us so happy.”
On the other hand, people’s perception that their country was coping well with the pandemic contributed to a general increase in well-being, said Sachs of Columbia. Several Asian countries fared better than last year’s ranking; China rose to 84th from 94th last year.
“This has been a difficult period. People are looking beyond that when looking for the long term. But there are also many people who suffer in the short term, ”he said.
Finnish philosopher Esa Saarinen, who was not involved in the report, believes that the Finnish character himself can help explain why the country continues to lead the index.
“I think Finns are quite happy to be what we are,” he said. “We really don’t have to be anymore.”
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Seth Borenstein in Washington DC contributed to this report.