World Happiness Report 2021: Finland retains title as happiest nation for the fourth time in a row

Finland

Finland has retained its title as the world’s happiest nation for the fourth time in a row.

The Nordic country defended its position in the World Happiness Report 2021 that was published on March 19 by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, and the Netherlands followed in second, third, fourth, and fifth positions, respectively. Afghanistan was ranked the least happy nation.

Here are some other countries that have been declared the happiest nations in the world:

- Sweden
- Germany
- Norway
- New Zealand
- Austria
- Israel
- Australia
- Ireland
- United States
- Canada

Considering the COVID-19 pandemic’s toll on nations, two rankings were published in the World Happiness Report 2021. One based on the average of the survey taken by Gallup over three years starting 2018 and the other focused only on the year 2020 to understand the impact of the pandemic on subjective well-being and how factors that contribute to well-being affected the impact of the pandemic.

The changes in the overall scores in the two ranking methods were modest, with both lists sharing nine nations in the top 10, namely Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, and Austria.

As it turned out, trust was the deciding factor that linked happiness and effective COVID-19 strategies, as societies exhibiting greater confidence in public institutions and enjoying more income equality fought the pandemic more successfully.

Finland could fight the coronavirus pandemic without imposing a lockdown – a measure that was found to have reduced life satisfaction. Even hospitals in the Nordic nation were not overwhelmed and could keep COVID-19 deaths to below 150 per million against a global average of nearly 980.