Despite the challenges and uncertainties created by the coronavirus pandemic last year, Finland has maintained its status as the happiest country in the world.
This is in line with the 2021 World Happiness Report, released on Friday. Among the 10 happiest countries, nine were European.
Following Finland, in order, were Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Austria, the report found.
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“We have found year after year that life satisfaction is considered to be happiest in the social democracies of northern Europe,” co-author Jeffrey Sachs told the Associated Press. “People feel safe in these countries, so trust is high. The government is seen as trustworthy and honest, and mutual trust is high.”
Finland is the happiest country in the world for the fourth consecutive year, despite the coronavirus pandemic, according to the 2021 World Happiness Report. (IStock)
Meanwhile, the United States came in 19th, down from last year.
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The annual report is produced by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and ranks 149 countries based on gross domestic product per person, healthy life expectancy and residents’ opinions.
He also surveys respondents, asking them to indicate on a scale of 1 to 10 how much social support they feel 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.
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The report typically includes data from the previous three years of research to “increase the sample size and keep the confidence limits lower,” a press release said.
However, this year, analysts also made a separate list of the happiest countries based only on the 2020 results to see how countries were doing during the pandemic, separate from previous years.
Finland also ranked first on that list, followed by Iceland, Denmark, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Norway, New Zealand and Austria.
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According to the press release, the report’s authors found that the most important factors for happiness were “people’s trust in each other and trust in their government”.
“We urgently need to learn from Covid-19,” said Sachs in a statement. “The pandemic reminds us of our global environmental threats, the urgent need to cooperate and the difficulties of achieving cooperation in each country and globally.”
“The World Happiness Report 2021 reminds us that we must aim for well-being and not mere wealth, which will be temporary if we do not do a much better job of meeting the challenges of sustainable development,” he added.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.