India has been ranked at the 126th place among 146 countries in the latest World Happiness Report published by a non-profit organisation launched by the United Nations.
The report was released on Monday on the occasion of the International Day of Happiness. The United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network publishes the report annually.
The index is based on data from Gallup World Polls from 2020 to 2022, in which respondents were asked to evaluate their quality of life. Six factors – gross domestic product, life expectancy, generosity, social support, freedom, and corruption – were estimated to contribute to life evaluations.
India’s current rank of 126 was ten places higher than its ranking of 136 from 2022. This year, India had a score of 4.036 on a scale of 0 to 10.
Pakistan was ranked at 108th place, while Bangladesh was at the 118th spot, the index showed. Sri Lanka was ranked 112th place while Nepal was 78th on the list.
According to the report, the happiest country in the world was Finland, with a score of 7.804. Two more Nordic countries – Denmark and Iceland – are second and third on the list.
Eight out of the top ten countries on the list were in Europe. Israel and New Zealand were the only two countries from outside Europe to feature among the top ten.
Both Russia and Ukraine reported higher levels of happiness in the latest report despite the escalation of the conflict between the two countries since February 2022. According to the index, Russia’s ranking improved from 80 in 2022 to 70 this year, while Ukraine’s ranking improved from 98 to 92. The 2022 report was based on data from 2019 to 2021.
John Helliwell, one of the authors of the World Happiness Report, said that benevolence, especially acts of kindness towards strangers, increased dramatically in 2021 and remained high in 2022, CNN reported.
“Even during these difficult years, positive emotions have remained twice as prevalent as negative ones, and feelings of positive social support twice as strong as those of loneliness,” he said.
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