ISLAMABAD: In the latest United Nations-backed Happiness Report, Pakistan has once again outshone India, maintaining its 108th position, while India fell behind at 126th, according to rankings released on Wednesday.
Finland remained the world’s happiest country for a seventh straight year while Nordic countries kept their places among the 10 most cheerful, with Denmark, Iceland and Sweden trailing Finland.
Israel, Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Australia claimed the remaining spots in the top 10.
Afghanistan, plagued by a humanitarian catastrophe since the Taliban regained control in 2020, stayed at the bottom of the 143 countries surveyed.
For the first time since the report was published more than a decade ago, the United States and Germany were not among the 20 happiest nations, coming in 23rd and 24th respectively.
In turn, Costa Rica and Kuwait entered the top 20 at 12 and 13.
The report noted the happiest countries no longer included any of the world’s largest countries.
“In the top 10 countries only the Netherlands and Australia have populations over 15 million. In the whole of the top 20, only Canada and the UK have populations over 30 million.”
The sharpest decline in happiness since 2006-10 was noted in Afghanistan, Lebanon and Jordan, while the Eastern European countries including Serbia, Bulgaria and Latvia reported the biggest increases.
The happiness ranking is based on individuals’ self-assessed evaluations of life satisfaction, as well as GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity and corruption.
This year, for the first time, a separate list of countries by age was also compiled. Lithuania ranked first for happiness among under-30s. Pakistan is ranked 107, India 127 and Bangladesh 128.
Similarly, in the list of people aged 60 years and above, Denmark was first, Pakistan at 112, India at 121 and Bangladesh at 120.
In this list of 143 countries, the last 20 countries have been included in the 20 unhappiest countries in the world, with Afghanistan at the top. Unhappy countries include Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, along with India.
