Finland defends its title as the happiest country in the world through a year marked by the pandemic, with the trust of people in each other and their government which is an important factor.
This is the fourth consecutive trophy for the Nordic country in the World Happiness Report 2021, released Friday by the United Nations Network for Sustainable Development.
As the 2020 pandemic turns on its head, the report provided two rankings: the regular one based on the average of three years of surveys Gallup conducted in 2018-2020, and a different focus on 2020 alone around the effect of the understand outbreaks on subjective well -being – and how factors that contribute to well-being affect the outcomes of pandemics.
Happiness and hardship
Europe tops rankings in year of pandemic, with US behind Costa Rica
Source: World Happiness Report
Trust was the key factor linking happiness and successful Covid-19 strategies, where societies with greater confidence in public institutions and greater income equality were the more successful in fighting the virus.
Finland has so far survived the pandemic better than most countries, and has avoided closures that have reduced life satisfaction around the world. Hospitals were not overwhelmed and managed to keep deaths below 150 per 1 million people, compared to the world average of around 980. Denmark, which came second, also withstood the pandemic relatively well.
The US dropped one spot to number 19, five places behind Canada and three among the developing country of Costa Rica, while people in Afghanistan remained the least happy.
Happiness scoreboard
The gap between the upper and lower countries has widened amid the pandemic
Source: World Happiness Report
The two ranking methods used this time show that changes in the overall scores were modest, ‘reflecting the global nature of the pandemic and a widespread resilience in light of it.’
For example, the top 10 of the two methods used shared nine countries: Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, and Austria.
“We need to strive for prosperity rather than just prosperity, which will indeed be fleeting if we do not tackle the challenges of sustainable development much better,” said Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. “The pandemic reminds us of our global threats to the environment, the urgent need to work together and the problems of co-operation in every country and worldwide. We urgently need to learn from Covid-19. ”
– Assisted by Zoe Schneeweiss