For the seventh time in a row, Finland is the country with the happiest population on earth. This emerges from the annual World Happiness Report, which was published this Wednesday on the occasion of the International Day of Happiness. In it, the scientists looked at the period from 2021 to 2023. Subjective assessments of the lives of the population living in the country were assessed.
The top positions are once again largely occupied by countries from the north. Finland was followed by Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Israel. Germany, on the other hand, made a significant move downwards and slipped from 16th place to 24th place. In the list, the largest countries are no longer among the happiest 20 – the USA also went down: 23rd place instead of last place 15th. Overall, that includes Ranking 143 countries.
“It’s more of a feeling of satisfaction”
The happiness researchers do not go into detail in the report about exactly what makes the Finns happier than all other peoples on earth. However, they have identified a number of key factors that generally make people happier, such as social support, income, freedom and the absence of corruption. “So it’s not necessarily happy in the sense of jumping up and down, of joy in the moment. It’s more of a feeling of contentment. That’s an important point, I think,” said Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, one of the authors of the World Happiness Report, the German Press Agency.
The fact is that people in Scandinavian countries rate their own lives very highly in these points and are satisfied. Global inequality in happiness has increased by more than 20 percent in all regions and age groups over the past twelve years. According to the World Happiness Report, the unhappiest country is Afghanistan. There is a difference of around six points on the average happiness scale from zero to ten between the country of the happiest people, Finland (7.7) and Afghanistan (1.7). Germany has a value of 6.7 on the scale; in the World Happiness Report from 2023 it was 6.9.