Canada isn’t the happiest place on earth, but it’s top of the heap in North America.
A World Happiness Report rankings, based largely on life evaluations from the Gallup World Poll, finds that Canada is #15 in the world on the happiness scale. That’s one spot ahead of the United States, and two ahead of the United Kingdom.
On the other hand, Canada was tenth in 2020 and ninth in the world in 2019, so perhaps we’re slipping.
For the fifth year in a row, Finland came in as the world’s happiest country, based on such factors as healthy life expectancy, GDP per capita, social support in times of trouble, low corruption and high social trust, generosity in a community where people look after each other and freedom to make key life decisions.
Taking the silver medal was Denmark, followed by Iceland, Switzerland the Netherlands, all of which are in northern Europe and all of which have substantial safety nets in place and, I believe, reasonably high taxes.
This year’s report also found worldwide growth in all acts of kindness monitored in the Gallup World Poll, Forbes reports.
“Helping strangers, volunteering and donations in 2021 were strongly up in every part of the world, reaching levels almost 25% above their pre-pandemic prevalence,” said John Helliwell, professor at the University of British Columbia and the editor of the World Happiness Report.
The report also looked at the world’s stress levels compared to the pre-pandemic era. Stress around the world was up 8% in 2020 versus “normal” times, but it rose 4% last year.
“I think part of that is people knew a little more what they were dealing with in the second year, even if there were new surprises,” Helliwell said.
Here’s the top 20 Most Happy Countries:
- Finland
- Denmark
- Iceland
- Switzerland
- Netherlands
- Luxembourg
- Sweden
- Norway
- Israel
- New Zealand
- Austria
- Australia
- Ireland
- Germany
- Canada
- United States
- United Kingdom
- Czech Republic
- Belgium
- France
Okay, who’s the LEAST happy? Forbes reports that Afghanistan ranked as the unhappiest countries in the world, with Lebanon, Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Botswana rounding out the bottom five.
