STOCKHOLM (AP) – The coronavirus brought a year of fear and anxiety, loneliness and blockage, illness and death, but an annual report on happiness around the world released on Friday suggests the pandemic has not crushed people’s spirits.
The editors of the 2021 World Happiness Report found that while emotions changed as the pandemic set in, long-term satisfaction with life was less affected.
“What we’ve found is that when people have a long vision, it’s shown a lot of resilience over the last year,” Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, one of the co-authors of the report, said from New York .
The annual report, compiled by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, ranks 149 countries according to gross domestic product per person, healthy life expectancy and residents ’opinions. Surveys ask respondents to indicate on a scale of 1-10 the amount of social support they feel if something goes wrong, their freedom to make their own life decisions, their sense of corruption in their society, and their generosity they have.
Due to the pandemic, surveys were conducted in just under 100 countries for this year’s World Happiness Report, the ninth compiled since the project began. Index rankings for other nations were based on previous data estimates.
The results of both methods led European countries to occupy nine of the top ten on the list of the happiest places in the word, with New Zealand completing the group. The top ten countries are Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Austria.
It was the fourth year in a row that Finland won first place. The United States, which ranked 13th five years ago, moved from 18th to 19th place. In an abbreviated list that ranked only the countries surveyed, the United States ranked 14th.
“We find year after year that the satisfaction of life is the happiest in the social democracies of northern Europe,” Sachs said. “People feel safe in these countries, so confidence is high. It is clear that the government is credible and honest and trust in each other is high.
Finland’s comparative success in curbing COVID-19 may have contributed to the lasting confidence that the people of the country have in their government. The country took swift and extensive measures to stop the spread of the virus and has one of the lowest mortality rates for COVID-19 in Europe.
“In Finland too, of course, people have suffered,” Anu Partanen, author of “The Nordic Theory of Everything,” said in Helsinki on Friday. “But back in Finland and the Nordic countries, people are very lucky because society still supports a system that protects these types of shocks.”
Overall, the index showed few changes in happiness levels compared to last year’s report, which was based on information prior to the pandemic.
“We asked two kinds of questions. One is about life in general, the evaluation of life, we say. How is it going? The other is about mood, emotions, stress, anxiety, “Sachs said.” Of course, we’re still in the middle of a deep crisis. But the answers about the assessment of the long-term lives did not change decisively, even though the disruption of our lives was so profound. “
Issues affecting the well-being of people living in the United States include racial tensions and growing income inequality among the richest and poorest residents, happiness experts say.
“As to why the United States ranks much lower than other similar or even less affluent countries, the answer is simple,” said Carol Graham, a Brookings Institution expert who did not participate in the report. . “The United States has larger differences in the ranking of happiness between rich and poor than most other rich countries.”
The co-author of the report, Sonja Lyubormirsky, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, noted that American culture shows signs of wealth such as large houses and multiple cars more than other countries, “and things materials don’t make us so happy. ”
By contrast, people’s perception that their country handled the pandemic well contributed to an overall increase in well-being, Sachs of Columbia said. Several Asian countries performed better than in last year’s rankings; China moved up to 84th place out of 94th last year.
“It was a difficult period. People look beyond it when looking for the long term. But there are also a lot of people who suffer in the short term, ”he said.
Finnish philosopher Esa Saarinen, who did not participate in the report, believes the Finnish character could help explain why the country continues to lead the index.
“I think Finns are a kind of content on a certain level to be exactly who we are,” he said. “We really don’t have to be anymore.”
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Seth Borenstein in Washington DC contributed to this report.