Finland defended its title of the world’s happiest country during a year marked by the pandemic, where people’s trust in each other and in their government proved to be a key factor.
It is the fourth consecutive trophy for the Scandinavian country in the World Happiness Report 2021, published Friday by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
When the pandemic turned 2020 on its head, the report yielded two rankings: the usual one based on the average of three years of surveys conducted by Gallup in 2018-2020 in 2018-2020, and another one targeting just 2020 to assess the better understand the effect of the outbreak on the subjective well. Being – and how factors contributing to well-being affect pandemic outcomes.
Happiness and deprivation
Europe leads the way in a year of pandemic, with the US behind Costa Rica
Source: World Happiness Report
Trust was the key factor linking happiness and successful Covid-19 strategies, with societies with greater trust in public institutions and greater income equality being the most successful in the fight against the virus.
Finland has weathered the pandemic better than most countries so far, by avoiding lockdowns that have diminished life satisfaction around the world. Hospitals have not been overwhelmed and it has managed to keep the number of deaths below 150 per 1 million people, compared to the global average of about 980. Denmark, which came in second, has also weathered the pandemic relatively well.
The US dropped one place to number 19, five places behind Canada and three below developing country Costa Rica, while people in Afghanistan remained the least happy.
Luck Scoreboard
The gap between the upper and lower countries widened during the pandemic
Source: World Happiness Report
The two ranking methods used this time show that the changes in the overall scores were modest, “reflecting both the global nature of the pandemic and a widely shared resilience in the face of the pandemic.”
For example, the top 10 of the two methods used shared nine countries: Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, and Austria.
“We must strive for well-being rather than mere wealth, which will indeed be fleeting if we don’t tackle the challenges of sustainable development much better,” said Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. “The pandemic reminds us of our global environmental threats, the urgent need to work together and the difficulties of working together in every country and worldwide. We urgently need to learn from Covid-19. “
– With the help of Zoe Schneeweiss