The Nordic countries rank high again in the survey.
Finland was ranked the happiest country in the world for the seventh time in a row, according to the World Happiness Report published on Wednesday.
The Nordic countries rank high again in the survey, as Denmark (2nd), Iceland (3rd) and Sweden (4th) were once again in the top positions in the list.
In the last place of the report, 143rd, was Afghanistan, again suffering from humanitarian problems, which has been ruled by the extremist Taliban for the past few years.
The ranking of some western countries fell based on the answers of young people. For the first time in the history of the happiness report, the United States (23rd) and Germany (24th) did not make the top twenty countries.
– Young people, especially in North America, are currently experiencing a mid-life crisis, commented the professor of economics at the University of Oxford Jan-Emmanuel De Nevewho was one of the authors of the report.
According to De Neve, the dissatisfaction of young people was increased by the increase in confrontation, the negative aspects of social media and economic inequality.
Based on the report, the populous countries were no longer ranked among the happiest countries. Among the countries with more than 15 million inhabitants, only the Netherlands and Australia were among the ten happiest countries.
The World Happiness Report has been published since 2012. The respondents were asked to evaluate their current life on a scale of 0–10, where the best possible life was described by a grade of 10 and the worst possible grade by 0. The ranking is influenced by the average of the answers from the past three years.
Sources: AFP, Reuters