World Happiness Report
World Map of Happiness
The World Happiness Report is the survey of the state of global happiness which is published by Sustainable Development Solutions Network. In 2021, the report focuses on the effects of COVID-19 on happiness and how people all over the world have fared.
In the world map, 149 countries are coloured based on their ladder score of happiness. The higher ladder score indicates the happier the people of the country are. Among all, Finland is ranked first as the happiest country in 2021.
World Rank of Happiness
How do the countries ranked for happiness in the past years?
There is a series of changes on the rank of happiness over the past years. The interactive chart below shows the changes of the rank for the Top K Countries from the year 2005 to 2020. Finland which is the happiest country in 2021 has been continuously ranked first since 2016.
Factors of Happiness
What makes up the score of happiness?
The happiness scores estimate the extent to the economic production, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, perceptions of corruption and generosity contribute in making life evaluations higher in each country than they are in Dystopia, which is a hypothetical country that has values equal to the world’s lowest national averages for each of the six factors.
The Top K Countries in 2021 with its respective scores gained for each factor, along with the residual and the comparison score with Dystopia are displayed. Each of these factors are computed to a certain score to total up as the happiness score (full: 10). Click the bar of the region bar chart to filter the region.
Average Happiness Score for Each Region
How happy is the people in each region in the past years?
From the year 2005 to 2020, the trend of the average happiness score for each region is observed. The average is calculated by taking the total happiness score of all countries in the region and divided by the number of reported countries. Among the 16 years, the average happiness score of the North America and ANZ hits the highest in 2009 and Sub-Saharan Africa hits the lowest in 2013.
North America and ANZ is constantly shown to be maintaining as the happiest region over the past years, and Western Europe comes as the second. Meanwhile, Sub-Saharan Africa is always the least happy region. However, for the year 2017 to 2019, South Asia becomes the region with the lowest average happiness score.
Happiness and Health
Are you happier if you are healthier?
Healthy Life Expectancy (HALE) is defined as the average number of years that a person can expect to live in "full health" by taking into account years lived in less than full health due to disease and/or injury. It is computed to a score with 100 as the full score. Based on the plot, it is proven that there is a high correlation between happiness and health, and a strong proportional relationship at that. In general, if the HALE of a country is high, the people will be happier.