Finland is the world's happiest country. Where does India rank?
The recently released World Happiness Report 2024 shows the world's largest nations like US and Germany falling out of the top 20 for the first time in over a decade
The report underscores a pattern where younger generations generally feel greater levels of happiness when compared to older age demographics. Image: Shutterstock
“No medicine cures what happiness cannot,” Gabriel GarcĂa Márquez, the Colombian novelist, had once said. Finns seem to be taking it too seriously. In a UN-sponsored report which lists down the happiest countries in the world, Finland is on the top for the year 2023, ending up in pole position for the seventh time. It is followed by Denmark and Iceland. An interesting observation of the World Happiness Report 2024 is that the happiest countries no longer include any of the globe's largest nations. Among the top 10, only the Netherlands and Australia have populations exceeding 15 million. According to this year’s report, the US and Germany have fallen out of the top 20 happiest nations for the first time in over a decade, now positioned at 23rd and 24th place, respectively.
Top 10 happiest countries in the world (2021-23)
- Finland
- Denmark
- Iceland
- Sweden
- Israel
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Luxembourg
- Switzerland
- Australia
The latest report also underscores a pattern where younger generations tend to generally feel greater levels of happiness when compared to older age demographics, except in North America, Australia, and New Zealand where happiness among the youth has declined since 2006-2010.
Also read: Want to meet happy Europeans? You won't find them in capital cities
As per the report, significant shifts in happiness levels have been noted since 2006-2010, with Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Jordan witnessing considerable declines, whereas Eastern European nations such as Serbia, Bulgaria, and Latvia have registered noteworthy increases. For the past couple of years, Afghanistan has remained at the bottom of the list and continues to occupy the lowest position among the 143 surveyed countries, grappling with persistent humanitarian crises following the Taliban's resurgence to power in 2020.
