The new World Happiness Report ratifies that a group of northern European countries are competing for the scepter

Talking about happiness and psycho-social well-being could be a bit risky in recent years , given the pandemic we have been through, the energy crisis that has hit us, the war between Russia and Ukraine and the growing tensions between the West and China.

All these difficulties would suggest that only working on a world ranking to catalog the countries, among the happiest and the unhappiest of the world , could also be anachronistic and out of place.

In reality, as history has taught us, the world goes on despite mankind's efforts, day and night, to think how to get to 'apocalypse, as there is a flow of positivity that does not end, that works, despite all the forces being adverse, to seek happiness.

It is probably starting from these irreducible positive currents that the World Happiness Report 2023 has drawn up the latest classification on the happiness of countries of the world.

Data collection was done on the basis of interviews in 137 countries, involving more than 100,000 people, who were asked to express a score from 1 to 10 regarding their satisfaction, with respect to some key parameters, such as social support, income, health, freedom, generosity and the absence of corruption.

Obviously happiness and its perception are subjective parameters, but the mixing of data on a broad audience and the comparison with values expressed in previous years to the same questions, gave the researchers an interesting picture.

In the countries that have returned to the top 20 it has been noted as benevolence, that sentiment shared by many populations , which translates into single actions or expressed through voluntary work, in assistance at various levels of others, expressing attention to the needs of others, free of charge and without different purposes other than helping and supporting those in need, is increased .

From here we can begin to understand from the interviews made, what happiness can be for some people, in fact, many have identified happiness as the possibility to be able to count on someone's help and, given that in some countries around 80% of the population declares that they can count on other people when needed, some interesting indications can be drawn of the degrees of happiness that make up the basket.

In this special ranking which, as we said, includes many parameters, in first place we find, once again, Finland, followed by a handful of Nordic countries such as Denmark and Iceland, then Israel, and then starting again with the northern latitudes, finding Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg and New Zealand.

Always remaining in the north, good progress has been made, for example Lithuania, which entered the top twenty in the standings, recovering from 52nd place, but also other Baltic countries such as Estonia and Latvia have made excellent progress.

Speaking of the countries where, rather than expressing a degree of happiness, one can speak of more unhappy countries, we find Afghanistan in the first place of the Taliban, followed by Lebanon, both countries torn apart by internal wars and very difficult living conditions.

This ranking has underlined how resilient the world's population is, in any case, and that a good part of the population lives with an open mind and works to improve their lives, working to improve, in some way, also the social context in which they live, despite pandemics, wars, corruption and socio-economic inequalities.

The data are also supported by the sharply increasing index of willingness to volunteering in many countries examined, and by the increase of material donations which, despite the uncertainty of the moment, does not see any decline.

To talk about numbers, let's see the countries considered by the World Happiness Report to be among the happiest and among the unhappiest:

The Top 20 of the happiest countries in the world

1. Finland

2. Denmark

3. Iceland

4. Israel

5. Netherlands

6. Sweden

7. Norway

8. Swiss

9. Luxembourg

10. New Zeland

11. Austria

12. Australia

13. Canada

14. Ireland

15. United States

16. Germany

17. Belgium

18. Czech Republic

19. United Kingdom

20. Lithuania

The Top 20 of the unhappiest countries in the world

1. Afghanistan

2. Lebanon

3. Sierra Leone

4. Zimbabwe

5. Congo

6. Botswana

7. Malawi

8. Comoros

9. Tanzania

10. Zambia

11. Madagascar

12. India

13. Liberia

14. Ethiopia

15. Jordan

16. Togo

17. Egypt

18. Mali

19. Gambia

20. bangladesh

Machine translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian