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India ranks 136th in the World Happiness Report 2022, while Finland becomes the happiest country for the fifth consecutive year. The top five countries in the list are part of Europe. While the United States held the 16th spot in the happiest countries list.
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.
On the other hand, Afghanistan held the last position of 146th in the list, with Lebanon (145th), Zimbabwe (144th), Rwanda (143rd), and Botswana (142nd) following.
This year marks the tenth anniversary of the World Happiness Report. The report's measurement of subjective well-being continues to rely on three main well-being indicators: life evaluations, positive emotions, and negative emotions (described in the report as positive and negative affect). Happiness rankings are based on life evaluations as the more stable measure of the quality of people’s lives.
Also, in the World Happiness Report 2022, 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.
"Finland continues to occupy the top spot, one of five Nordic countries in the top ten," the World Happiness Report said.
After the top ten countries, the following five are Austria, Australia, Ireland, Germany, and Canada. This marks a substantial fall for Canada, which was 5th ten years in the first World Happiness Report. The rest of the top 20 include the United States at 16th (up from 19th last year), the United Kingdom, and Czechia still in 17th and 18th, followed by Belgium at 19th and France at 20th, its highest ranking yet.
The report stated that "over the past ten years, life evaluations rose by more than a full point on the 0 to 10 scale in 15 countries and fell by that amount or more in eight countries."
According to the report, the ten countries with the largest gains from 2008-2012 to 2019-2021 were, in order, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Togo, Bahrain, Latvia, Benin, Guinea, and Armenia. The ten countries with the largest drops were Lebanon, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Jordan, Zambia, India, Mexico, and Botswana.
