World Happiest Country 2024: The United States and Germany, ranked 23rd and 24th, respectively. They were not among top 20 happiest countries for the first time since report’s publication more than ten years ago.
According to annual World Happiness Report sponsored by UN released Finland has been the world’s happiest nation for seven years. India remained at position 126 on the happiness rating from the previous year.
The Nordic nations maintained their rankings in the top ten of the world’s happiest place list. The list portrays Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden lagging behind Finland. Afghanistan remained at the bottom of the 143 countries surveyed. The main reason is wracking by humanitarian crisis ever since the Taliban retook power in 2020. According to the report, none of the biggest nations in the world were among the happiest countries.
Only Australia and the Netherlands have more than 15 million population among the top ten nations. Merely Canada and the United Kingdom possess populations over 30 million out of the top 20.
Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Jordan saw the worst declines in happiness between 2006 and 2010, while Serbia, Bulgaria, and Latvia saw the largest rises. Self-assessed assessments of life satisfaction by individuals, along with GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and corruption, are the basis for the happiness ranking.
Why Finland ranks top on list of world happiest country 2024?
Jennifer De Paola, a happiness researcher at the University of Helsinki stated two important factors in the happiness of Finns. She says that Finns have healthy work-life balance and strong ties to the natural world.
Furthermore, she added that Finns might have a “more attainable understanding of what a successful life is” in contrast to the United States, where success is frequently associated with monetary gain.
Important factors were also the robust welfare state, public confidence in government, low levels of corruption, and free healthcare and education in Finland. According to this year’s survey, in most parts of the world, but not all of them, younger generations are happier than their older counterparts.
Since 2006–2010, the happiness of those under 30 has significantly decreased in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. This concludes older generations now experiencing greater happiness than younger ones.
In contrast, happiness rose significantly at all ages in Central and Eastern Europe during the same period. However, happiness levels across the board were similar in Western Europe. All regions saw increased happiness inequality, except Europe, which authors called a “worrying trend”.
