World Happiness Report 2022 released

The United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network has recently released the World Happiness Report 2022.

About the World Happiness Report:

• The World Happiness Report ranks countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be.
• Since 2011, the World Happiness Report (WHR) is released every year around the time of International Day of Happiness on March 20 which was adopted by the UN General Assembly based on a resolution tabled by Bhutan.
• It is published since 2012 and is based on two key ideas:
• Happiness or life evaluationmeasured through opinion surveys and
• Identifying key elements that determine well-being and life evaluation across countries.
• The ranking is done on a three-year average based on surveys of ‘Life Evaluation’ conducted by Gallup World Poll which surveys around 1000 people from each country to evaluate their current life on a scale of 0-10.
• On this scale, 10 marks the best possible and 0 as the worst possible life.
• Further, six key variables GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and corruption contribute to explaining life evaluations.

Highlights of the 2022 Report:

• The 2022 report ranked 146 countries.
• Special attention was given to specific daily emotions (the components of positive and negative affect) to better track how COVID-19 has altered different aspects of life.
• India ranks 136th in the World Happiness Report 2022.
• Top 10 happiest countries:
• Finland becomes the happiest country for the fifth consecutive year. 
• Following Finland, Denmark bagged the second rank, while Iceland and Switzerland stood at third and fourth rank.
• The Netherlands was at the fifth rank in the list. Meanwhile, Luxembourg, Norway, Israel, and New Zealand were the remaining countries in the top 10.
• Worst Performers:
• Afghanistan was ranked as the unhappiest nation, followed by Lebanon, Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Botswana, respectively.