Move FM Australian News

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistan has once again stolen the focus from India in the new United Nations-backed Happiness Report, maintaining its 108th position while India fell to 126th in the rankings announced on Wednesday.

Finland remained the world’s happiest country for the seventh consecutive year, while Nordic countries maintained their positions in the top ten happiest, with Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden trailing Finland.

Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Australia rounded out the top ten.

Afghanistan, which a humanitarian crisis has beset since the Taliban retook authority in 2020, remained at the bottom of the 143 countries surveyed.

For the first time since the research was launched more than a decade ago, the United States and Germany did not rank among the top 20 happiest countries, placing 23rd and 24th, respectively.
Costa Rica and Kuwait joined the top 20 at 12 and 13, respectively.

According to the report, none of the world’s largest countries are now among the happiest countries.

“Only the Netherlands and Australia have populations of more than 15 million among the top ten countries, and only Canada and the United Kingdom have more than 30 million populations.

Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Jordan experienced the worst declines in happiness from 2006-10, while Eastern European countries such as Serbia, Bulgaria, and Latvia saw the most remarkable rises.

The happiness ranking is based on people’s self-reported life satisfaction, GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and corruption.

This year, a separate list of countries by age was created for the first time. Lithuania is rated top for happiness among people under the age of 30. Pakistan is ranked 107, India 127, and Bangladesh 128.

Similarly, Denmark ranked first among persons over 60, Pakistan at 112, India at 121, and Bangladesh at 120.

The last 20 countries on this list of 143 have been designated as the world’s 20 unhappiest, with Afghanistan at the top. The unhappy countries are Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and India.