Countries of the World: Finland the happiest, Lebanon and Afghanistan the saddest

Shafaq News/ The United Nations has released its 10th annual World Happiness Report—just days ahead of the annual International Day of Happiness on March 20.

For the fifth year in a row, Finland has been named the happiest country globally, with Denmark coming in second, followed by Iceland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

The World Happiness Report—which ranks global happiness in more than 150 countries worldwide—is released every year by the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network. The statisticians base the ranking on data from the Gallup World Poll and several other factors, including levels of GDP, life expectancy, and more.

With the world entering the third year of the pandemic, the report had three areas of focus in 2022: looking back, looking at how people and countries are doing in the face of Covid-19, and looking ahead to how the science of well-being is likely to evolve in the future.

According to the report, there is still a lot of year-to-year consistency in the way people rate their lives in the top-ranking countries. So, where did other countries fall on the list this year? In this year’s report, the U.S. came in at number 16. Our neighbors in Canada, however, beat us at number 15. France reached its highest ranking to date, at number 20.

Besides the happiest countries in the world, the report also looked at the places where people are the saddest. Afghanistan ranked as the unhappiest country globally, with Lebanon, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, and Botswana rounding out the bottom five.