Despite the challenges and uncertainty created by the coronavirus pandemic over the past year, Finland has maintained its status as the happiest country in the world.
According to the 2021 World Happiness Report, released Friday. Among the ten happiest countries, nine were European.
After Finland, in order, were Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Austria, according to the report.
“We find year after year that the satisfaction of life is the happiest of the social democracies of northern Europe,” the report’s co-author, Jeffrey Sachs, told The Associated Press. “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.
Meanwhile, the United States ranked 19th, down one place from last year.
The annual report is compiled by the United Nations Network for Solutions for Sustainable Development and ranks 149 countries according to gross domestic product per person, healthy life expectancy and residents’ views.
It also surveys respondents, asking them to indicate on a scale of 1-10 how much social support they feel if something goes wrong, their freedom to make their own life decisions, their sense of corruption from their society and the generosity they have.
Typically, the report includes data from previous three-year surveys to “increase sample size and keep confidence limits smaller,” a press release said.
However, this year, analysts also made a separate list of the happiest countries based solely on the 2020 results to see how the countries were doing during the pandemic, separate from past years.
Finland also topped the list, followed by Iceland, Denmark, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Norway, New Zealand and Austria.
According to the press release, the report’s authors found that the most important factors for happiness were “people’s trust in each other and trust in their government.”
“We urgently need to learn from Covid-19,” Sachs said in a statement. “The pandemic reminds us of our global environmental threats, the urgent need to cooperate and the difficulties in achieving cooperation in each country and globally.”
“The 2021 World Happiness Report reminds us that we must seek well-being rather than mere wealth, which will be ephemeral if we do not do a much better job of meeting the challenges of sustainable development,” he added.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.