The World Happiness Report is an annual publication of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
March 20 was designated as the World Happiness Day by General assembly in 2012
It contains articles, and rankings of national happiness based on respondent ratings of their own lives, which the report also correlates with various life factors. As of March 2019.
On April 2, 2012, this was followed by the first UN High Level Meeting called Wellbeing and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm, which was chaired by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Prime Minister Jigme Thinley of Bhutan, a nation that adopted gross national happiness instead of gross domestic product as their main development indicator.
The first World Happiness Report was released on April 1, 2012 as a foundational text for the UN High Level Meeting: Well-being and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm, drawing international attention. The report outlined the state of world happiness, causes of happiness and misery, and policy implications highlighted by case studies.
In 2013, the second World Happiness Report was issued, and since then has been issued on an annual basis with the exception of 2014. The report primarily uses data from the Gallup World Poll.
Each annual report is available to the public to download on the World Happiness Report website.
Method of Ranking
The rankings of national happiness are based on a Cantril ladder survey. Nationally representative samples of respondents are asked to think of a ladder, with the best possible life for them being a 10, and the worst possible life being a 0.
They are then asked to rate their own current lives on that 0 to 10 scale. The report correlates the results with various life factors.
In the reports, experts in fields including economics, psychology, survey analysis, and national statistics, describe how measurements of well-being can be used effectively to assess the progress of nations, and other topics.
Each report is organized by chapters that delve deeper into issues relating to happiness, including mental illness, the objective benefits of happiness, the importance of ethics, policy implications, and links with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) approach to measuring subjective well-being and other international and national efforts.
Topics of Annual Report
World Happiness Reports were issued in 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016 (an update), 2017 and 2018. In addition to ranking countries happiness and well-being levels, each report has contributing authors and most focus on a subject. The data used to rank countries in each report is drawn from the Gallup World Poll, as well as other sources such as the World Values Survey, in some of the reports.
The Gallup World Poll questionnaire measures 14 areas within its core questions:
(2) Citizen engagement
(3) Communications & technology
(4) Diversity (social issues)
(5) Education & families
(6) Emotions (well-being)
(7) Environment & energy
(8) Food & shelter
(9) Government and politics
(10) Law & order (safety)
(11) Health
(12) Religion & ethics
(13) Transportation
(14) Work.
World Happiness Index 2020
The World Happiness Report ranks 156 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be. The 2020 report features the happiness score averaged up to March 2019. As per the 2020 Happiness Index, Finland is the happiest country in the world two times in a row. Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland and Norway hold the next top positions. The report was published on 20 March 2020 by UN.
Top 20 Counties or Region according to World Happiness Index 2020.
Overall Rank
|
Country or Region
|
Score out of 10
|
1
|
Finland
|
7.809
|
2
|
Denmark
|
7.646
|
3
|
Switzerland
|
7.560
|
4
|
Iceland
|
7.504
|
5
|
Norway
|
7.488
|
6
|
Netherlands
|
7.449
|
7
|
Sweden
|
7.353
|
8
|
New Zealand
|
7.300
|
9
|
Austria
|
7.294
|
10
|
Luxembourg
|
7.238
|
11
|
Canada
|
7.232
|
12
|
Australia
|
7.223
|
13
|
United Kingdom
|
7.165
|
14
|
Israel
|
7.129
|
15
|
Costa Rica
|
7.121
|
16
|
Ireland
|
7.094
|
17
|
Germany
|
7.076
|
18
|
United States
|
6.940
|
19
|
Czech Republic
|
6.911
|
20
|
Belgium
|
6.864
|
Other important countries ranking according to index:
Overall Rank
|
Country or Region
|
Score out of 10
|
21
|
UAE
|
6.791
|
62
|
Japan
|
5.871
|
66
|
Pakistan
|
5.693
|
73
|
Russia
|
5.546
|
82
|
Malaysia
|
5.384
|
84
|
Indonesia
|
5.286
|
87
|
Maldives
|
5.198
|
92
|
Nepal
|
5.137
|
94
|
China
|
5.124
|
130
|
Sri Lanka
|
4.327
|
133
|
Myanmar
|
4.308
|
144
|
India
|
3.573
|
152
|
South Sudan
|
2.817
|
153
|
Afghanistan
|
2.567
|
Performance India from 2017 to 2020:
Year
|
Rank
|
Score
|
2020
|
144
|
3.573
|
2019
|
140
|
4.015
|
2018
|
133
|
4.190
|
2017
|
122
|
4.315
|
Philosophical Concern
From a philosophical perspective, critics argue that measuring the happiness of a group of people is misleading because happiness is an individual matter. They state the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, Tolstoy and several others, happiness is an individual choice that is independent of the society, its structures and enabling or dis-enabling conditions and not something to be measured using variables that can only capture a nation's well-being. This means therefore that one cannot really talk of a happy or unhappy nation, but of happy or unhappy individuals.
