The 4th World Happiness Report is out and it says that Denmark is the happiest country in the world. This report is published by Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) which is an initiative of UN. This year Denmark has replaced Switzerland to be the number one happy country in the world. Along with Denmark, the other four countries to be ranked as top five are Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, and Finland. On this list, the USA is 13th happiest country and the UK is 23rd happiest country.
According to this report, India is the 118th happiest country in the world and interestingly, Pakistan is ahead of India on 92 and China is on 83. Last year, India was 117th in this list of World’s Happiest Country. This list of the happiest country is prepared after considering GDP per capita, social support, life expectancy, and freedom of making life choices of each country.
India also falls in the group of countries where happiness is declining alarmingly, the other countries in this group are Egypt, Yemen, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Botswana.
As per the report, Burundi is the least happy country in the world and is ranked 157. In fact, Syria that is witnessing one of the worst civil war of human civilisation with over 2,50,000 people dead in over last 5 years is still ahead of Burundi in 156. Currently, Burundi is facing severe political unrest and also the uncontrollable threat of violence.
In terms of region, Northern America, Latin America, Europe, and the Caribbean happens to be the happiest region, and South Asia as well as sub-Saharan Africa region has an average rating of 5 or less out of 10 in terms of wellbeing.
One of the important revelations of this report is that lesser inequality leads to improved happiness. This report states that “People are happier living in societies where there is less inequality of happiness. They also find that happiness inequality has increased significantly (comparing 2012-2015 to 2005-2011) in most countries, in almost all global regions, and for the population of the world as a whole.”
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