This year’s World Happiness Report has been released and features some glum findings for the US: For the first time since the index began, the country is not ranked in the top 20. Things seem particularly tough for young Americans whose happiness levels have fallen sharply since 2010.
Some things never change, though; Finland secured its place as the world’s happiest country for the seventh successive time, while the other four Nordic countries – Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland – were all comfortably in the top 10. The US dropped seven places from 15 last year to 23rd, meaning for the first time since the rankings began 12 years ago it is not included in the top 20.
The top 20 happiest countries, according to the report, were as follows:
- Finland
- Denmark
- Iceland
- Sweden
- Israel
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Luxembourg
- Switzerland
- Australia
- New Zealand
- Costa Rica
- Kuwait
- Austria
- Canada
- Belgium
- Ireland
- Czechia
- Lithuania
- United Kingdom
The only new addition to the top 20 was Lithuania. Several other former-Soviet states have recently seen a boost in happiness, particularly Serbia (37th) and Bulgaria (81st) which have witnessed the biggest increases in their scores since they were first measured in 2013.
Afghanistan remains at the bottom of the list, followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, and Lebanon.
One of the most prominent – and worrying – findings of the report was the declining happiness of young people in certain parts of the planet. On a global scale, the happiness of youngsters has increased. However, the data suggests that the well-being of 15- to 24-year-olds has fallen in North America, Western Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.
Historically, young people have reported higher life satisfaction than older people, but that trend has recently been reversed in North America; old folks are now happier than young people. A similar trend is starting to emerge in Western Europe too.
“Piecing together the available data on the wellbeing of children and adolescents around the world, we documented disconcerting drops, especially in North America and Western Europe,” Professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, a Belgian economist at the University of Oxford and an Editor of the World Happiness Report, said in a statement.
“To think that, in some parts of the world, children are already experiencing the equivalent of a mid-life crisis demands immediate policy action,” he added.
It’s not the first time that research has shown a concerning drop in happiness among young adults and teenagers in North America and Europe. There are no definitive answers to what’s driving the trend, but commonly cited factors are economic uncertainty, poor job prospects, political polarization, a lack of meaningful social connections, and the rise of technology.
Leave a Reply