Do you know which is the world's happiest country? Despite an ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and economies taking a toll due to it, there is still a country in the world that has been declared as the happiest place to live, by an annual UN-sponsored report on Friday.
This is the fourth consecutive time that Finland has been ranked as the world's happiest country by the United Nation's annual International Day of Happiness on March 20.
Finland's residents enjoy a high quality of life, security, and public services, with rates of inequality and poverty among the lowest of all OECD countries.
The results of the World Happiness Report 2021 have put Finland again in the top spot with Iceland coming in second, followed by Denmark, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.
The researchers behind the World Happiness Report, now in its ninth year, used Gallup data asking people in 149 countries to rate their own happiness, also taking into account measures such as GDP, social support, personal freedom, and levels of corruption to give each nation a happiness score, which is an average of the past three years.
Just like in previous years, this year too the top spots were dominated by European countries. New Zealand, falling one place to ninth, was again the only non-European nation in the top ten.
Despite challenging times for the United States, things improved here too. The US climbed four spots to rank number 14, up from last year when it ranked 18.
In the World Happiness Report 2019, the United States was even lower, at number 19. On the other hand, neighbouring country Canada slipped to number 15.
Germany climbed to the 13th spot from the 17th and France raised two places to secure the 21st slot. The UK, meanwhile, fell from 13th to 17th place.
African nations Lesotho, Botswana, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe came at the bottom of the table, but ahead of Afghanistan which was classed as the world's unhappiest nation this year.
World Happiness Report is an annual survey conducted by the UN's Sustainable Development Solutions Network and was launched in 2012.
The annual survey ranks global happiness in countries around the world.
Typically, the statisticians base the ranking on data from the Gallup World Poll. But this year was a bit different.
Since the researchers were unable to do face-to-face interviews in a number of countries, they focused on the relationship between well-being and COVID-19 in order to rank the countries.