While the pandemic definitely changed our lives, it didn’t cause global happiness to take a hit, according to new research. The World Happiness Report for 2023 is now out, just in time for the International Day of Happiness on March 20th. It finds that despite the challenges COVID caused, “positive emotions have remained twice as prevalent as negative ones, and feelings of positive social support twice as strong as those of loneliness.”
- The World Happiness Report uses data from a global survey from people in more than 150 countries.
- Countries are ranked on happiness based on their average life evaluations over the three preceding years, for 2023’s report those are 2020 to 2022.
- It names the happiest countries in the world, as well as the factors that tend to lead to more happiness. One of them is benevolence, which is about 25% higher than it was pre-pandemic. John Halliwell, one of the authors of the World Happiness Report, explains, “Benevolence to others, especially the helping of strangers, which went up dramatically in 2021, stayed high in 2022.”
- For the sixth year in a row, Finland is the world’s happiest country. Finland and its neighbors Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Norway all scored well in metrics the report uses including healthy life expectancy, social support, low corruption and generosity in the community.
World’s happiest countries for 2023
(Check out the full list here here)
- Finland
- Denmark
- Iceland
- Israel
- Netherlands
- Sweden
- Norway
- Switzerland
- Luxembourg
- New Zealand
- Austria
- Australia
- Canada
- Ireland
- United States
- Germany
- Belgium
- Czech Republic
- United Kingdom
- Lithuania
Source: CNN