Africa Daily News, New York reports that going by the rankings the Nordic country and its neighbors Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland all score very well on the measures the report uses to explain its findings: healthy life expectancy, GDP per capita, social support in times of trouble, low corruption and high social trust, generosity in a community where people look after each other and freedom to make key life decisions.
Going by the rankings, Denmark comes in at Number 2 in this year’s rankings, followed by Iceland at Number 3. Sweden and Norway are seventh and eighth, respectively.
Switzerland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg take places 4 through 6, with Israel coming in at No. 9 and New Zealand rounding out the top 10.
Canada (Number 15), the United States (Number 16), and the United Kingdom (Number 17) all made it into the top 20.
The world is on edge due to the tragic loss of life and mounting uncertainty, but there is some good news for mankind: charity is expanding throughout the world.
This is one of the main conclusions of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s World Happiness Report, which is based on data from a global survey of respondents in about 150 different nations.
Marking its 10th anniversary, the report looks at happiness around the world — the happiest nations, those at the very bottom of the happiness scale and everything in between, plus the factors that tend to lead to greater happiness.
And with two years of Covid-19 pandemic data on the books, the report has uncovered something unexpected.
“The big surprise was that globally, in an uncoordinated way, there have been very large increases in all the three forms of benevolence that are asked about in the Gallup World Poll,” John Helliwell, one of the report’s three founding editors, told CNN Travel.
Donating to charity, helping a stranger and volunteering are all up, “especially the help to strangers in 2021, relative to either before the pandemic or 2020, by a very large amount in all regions of the world,” said Helliwell, who is a professor emeritus at the Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia.
The global average of the three measures jumped by about 25% in 2021 compared with pre-pandemic levels, the report says.
And benevolence is certainly top of mind as the world responds to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But before getting into how that increasingly global conflict may impact happiness, let’s look at countries where the feeling was abundant in 2021.
