Finland ranked world’s happiest country for fifth year running

Finland has been named the world’s happiest country for the fifth year in a row, in an annual UN-sponsored report.

Finland has been named the world’s happiest country for a fifth year running, in an annual UN-sponsored index. The report ranked Denmark in the second place, with Switzerland, Iceland, and the Netherlands rounding up the top five happiest places in the world.

The authors of the report said that Finland ranked very high was on “the measures of mutual trust that helped protect lives and livelihood during the pandemic”.

According to John Hopkins University, the Nordic nation of 5.5 million people fared better than the majority of European nations during the Covid-19 pandemic. Finland reported just over 70,000 cases and 805 deaths due to coronavirus.

Published ever since 2012 by United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the World Happiness Report is based on people’s own assessment of their happiness, as well as economic and social data. For the World Happiness Report 2022, people across 149 countries were asked to rate their happiness.

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While Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia recorded the biggest boosts in wellbeing, the largest falls in the world happiness table came in Lebanon, Venezuela and Afghanistan.

The latest list, which was complied before the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, ranked Afghanistan as the unhappiest.