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The World Happiness Report 2021 has been released by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and Finland was once again crowned as the world's happiest country.
India has been ranked 139 out of 149 countries in the list of UN World Happiness Report 2021. In 2019, India was ranked 140th.
What is World Happiness Report?
The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness that ranks 149 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be.
The World Happiness Report 2021 focuses on the effects of Covid-19 and how people all over the world have fared.
The annual report ranks nations based on gross domestic product per person, healthy life expectancy and the opinions of residents. Surveys ask respondents to indicate on a 1-10 scale how much social support they feel they have if something goes wrong, their freedom to make their own life choices, their sense of how corrupt their society is and how generous they are.
“Our aim was two-fold, first to focus on the effects of COVID-19 on the structure and quality of people’s lives, and second to describe and evaluate how governments all over the world have dealt with the pandemic. In particular, we try to explain why some countries have done so much better than others,” it said in a statement.
“There have been both in-person and telephone samples for India, with the in-person responses being lower than telephone responses, while significantly higher than in-person responses in 2019. Hence the reversal in 2020 of the longer-term slide in Indian life evaluations was not attributable to mode effects,” it added.
Finland has been ranked as the happiest country in the world for the fourth consecutive year. The Nordic nation is followed by Iceland, Denmark, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and Norway.
Pakistan is on 105th, Bangladesh on 101st and China on 84th, according to the report.
People in war-torn Afghanistan are the most unhappy with their lives, followed by Zimbabwe (148), Rwanda (147), Botswana (146) and Lesotho (145).
The happiness study ranks the countries of the world on the basis of questions from the Gallup World Poll. The results are then correlated with other factors, including GDP and social security.
The United States ranks at 19th place for happiness, despite being one of the richest countries in the world.
Overall, the index showed little change in happiness levels compared to last years' report, which was based on information from before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Here's the list of top 20 World's happiest countries of 2021:
1. Finland
2. Demark
3. Switzerland
4. Iceland
5. The Netherlands
6. Norway
7. Sweden
8. Luxembourg
9. New Zealand
10. Austria
11. Australia
12. Israel
13. Germany
14. Canada
15. Ireland
16. Costa Rica
17. United Kingdom
18. The Czech Republic
19. United States
20. Belgium
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