The score accounts for wealth (as GDP per capita), social support, health (as life expectancy), freedom to travel, generosity and corruption.
This year the league table looks little changed.
For the sixth year in a row Finland was named the happiest country in the world, followed by Denmark and Iceland.
To celebrate the news the national tourism board Visit Finland has launched a smugly titled four-day “Masterclass of Happiness”, inviting participants to visit the lakes of Järvi-Suomi to learn the Finnish way of contentment. The top ten in the league is dominated by mostly Northern European countries. New Zealand (ranked tenth) and Israel (fourth) are the only geographical outliers in this trend.
New Zealand has been consistently in the top ten but has fallen two places in relative happiness, since the first report was compiled a decade ago.
In fact Aotearoa’s happiness score has dropped by 0.077 to 7.123 Even Finland has slumped in general contentedness from 7.821 to 7.804. Although this year’s Happiness Report claims to show “remarkable resilience”, with global life satisfaction averages to be comparable to pre-pandemic years, there is a slight cooling in contentedness overall. Gallup Poll Data shows that on average happiness has fallen by -0.08 points since records began, ten years ago.
The biggest falls have been seen in Western Europe (by -0.8) and North America (-0.4), although happiness has improved in the regions of Eastern Europe (0.4) and Sub-Saharan Africa (by 0.2) over the last decade.
One of the few countries which have bucked the trend is Lithuania.
The Baltic country is the only new country to enter the top twenty, having climbed 30 places since 2017.
Meanwhile Afghanistan and Lebanon remain at the bottom of the happiness league.
“The happiness movement shows that well-being is not a ‘soft’ and ‘vague’ idea but rather focuses on areas of life of critical importance: material conditions, mental and physical wealth, personal virtues, and good citizenship,” said the economist Jeffrey Sachs, one of the report’s co-authors.
“We need to turn this wisdom into practical results to achieve more peace, prosperity, trust, civility – and yes, happiness – in our societies.”
The ‘happiness gap’
Although Finland has taken the crown again as the world’s happiest country, there may be more to fulfilment than saunas and birch forests.
There are many trends and changes that the happiness ranking displays and some that barely change the rankings. For example happiness score of Ukraine suffered less last year, during its war with Russia, than it did in 2014, following the annexation of Crimea.
World Happiness Report suggests that one of the biggest factors in predicting general happiness is the ‘happiness gap’. Distribution of happiness predicts that countries with greater gaps between the most happy and least happy residents are most likely to perform poorly in the rankings, whereas the top performing ‘happiest countries’ experience little inequality between citizens’ happiness.
While this happiness equality is not completely dependent on income or GDP, people are more content in countries where the happiness gap and inequality is smaller. It turns out that comparison really is the thief of joy.
Professor Lara Aknin of the Simon Fraser University said her most interesting takeaway from the 2023 report was a growing trend in ‘generosity’.
“For a second year, we see that various forms of everyday kindness, such as helping a stranger, donating to charity, and volunteering, are above pre-pandemic levels.”
The 10 Happiest Countries in the World
- Finland
- Denmark
- Iceland
- Israel
- Netherlands
- Sweden
- Norway
- Switzerland
- Luxembourg
- New Zealand
World Happiness Report 2023
