World Happiness Report 2023: What's the highway to happiness?
Published by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the World Happiness Report ranks countries on happiness based on their average life evaluations in terms of six key variables
The recently published World Happiness Report 2023 ranked Finland as the happiest country in the world. Finland has been in the top position in the index for the last five years in a row, which poses the question: what is it that makes the people of a country happy?
Published by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the World Happiness Report ranks countries on happiness based on their average life evaluations in terms of six key variables: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and absence of corruption, gauged over the three preceding years, in this case, 2020 to 2022.
The report takes a closer look at the trends of how happiness is distributed, in many cases unequally, among people. Income, health, dependency, sense of freedom to make key life decisions, generosity, and the absence of corruption play strong roles in supporting life evaluations.
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According to the list, people of countries with effective democratic institutions and good governance are much happier than those having deficiency in those areas – indicating that democracy, good governance and strong rule of law leads to an improved quality of life, increasing happiness of the people.
Along with Finland, Sweden and Denmark most of the countries in the top ten are Scandinavian nations – where there are strong governance systems and adherence to human rights. The countries also rank very low in corruption.
Afghanistan, Lebanon, Sierra Leone are at the bottom of the list, and all of those countries demonstrate an absence of democratic institutions and good governance, but a presence of corruption.
"Happiest countries prove resilient despite overlapping crises," the report said.
The report also focuses on factors such as social support, income, health, freedom, generosity, and absence of corruption to explain variation in self-reported levels of happiness across the world. The happiness index is linked to other global indexes on corruption, freedom of the press, economic freedom and rule of law that support the findings of the report.
From growing GDP per capita to freedom of expression, social services, the countries in the top of the list have a stellar reputation.
Sweden, for instance, became the world's first country to adopt a press freedom law in 1766. The 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index released by Transparency International scored Finland at 87 on a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).
The report further states that there is a growing consensus that happiness can be promoted through public policies and the actions of business and civil society; adding that happiness and well-being can be usefully measured in a number of ways, including through surveys of people's satisfaction with their lives.
