The “World Happiness Report” is a measure of the happiness of countries based on indicators such as national GDP, healthy average life expectancy, freedom of life and social support. It has interviewed more than 9 million people around the world through public opinion surveys.
New York, NY (Merxwire) – Do you think you are happy? The United Nations World Happiness Report 2022 has entered its tenth year, and recently released the latest survey report. Among 146 countries and regions, Finland has been the happiest country in the world with a score of 7.821 for five consecutive years. The second place is Denmark, Iceland ranks third, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden, Norway, Israel and New Zealand are ranked 4 to 10 in order.
As the pandemic enters its third year, this year’s report looks specifically at the relationship between well-being and Covid-19, by looking at how countries have fared during the pandemic and trying to explain why some countries may be better than others . The research team believes that the biggest reason is the people’s trust in the government. When the government takes action to improve people’s lives, it will reduce the negative impact of the epidemic on people’s happiness.
In addition, the report shows that the global charity boom has surged during the COVID-19 period. Charitable donations, helping strangers, and even the number of international volunteers have increased significantly compared with before the epidemic. Mutual aid can make people’s lives happier. John Helliwell, emeritus professor of economics at the University of British Columbia, wrote in the report: “We found during 2021 remarkable worldwide growth in all three acts of kindness monitored in the Gallup World Poll, Helping strangers, volunteering, and donations in 2021 were strongly up in every part of the world, reaching levels almost 25% above their pre-pandemic prevalence.”
An interesting finding is that the UN Sustainable Development Goals are positively correlated with people’s happiness. According to research published in Nature Scientific Reports, countries with higher SDG index scores tend to perform better in subjective well-being, with Nordic countries topping both rankings.
Another co-editing professor, Lara Aknin of Simon Fraser University, believes that World Happiness Report provides people with different perspectives to assess happiness, and can help more governments understand how to strive to practice people’s happiness.