Source: UNO and The Hindu Businessline
Background
- The first seven reports were produced by the founding trio of co-editors assembled in Thimphu in July 2011 pursuant to the Bhutanese Resolution passed by the General Assembly in June 2011, that invited national governments to “give more importance to happiness and well-being in determining how to achieve and measure social and economic development.”
- The Thimphu meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Jigme Y. Thinley and Jeffrey D. Sachs, was called to plan for a United Nations High-Level Meeting on ‘Well-Being and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm’ held at the UN on April 2, 2012.
- The first World Happiness Report was prepared in support of that meeting, bringing together the available global data on national happiness and reviewing evidence from the emerging science of happiness.
About the report
- The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness that ranks 156 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be.
- The World Happiness Report 2020 for the first time ranks cities around the world by their subjective well-being and digs more deeply into how the social, urban and natural environments combine to affect our happiness.
- 2020 report is 8th world Happiness Report
- Researchers for the World Happiness Report asked people in 156 countries to evaluate their own levels of happiness and took into account measures such as GDP, social support, personal freedom and levels of corruption to give each nation a happiness score.
Who releases this report?
The World Happiness Report is an annual publication of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network
Best performers
- Finland is the Happiest nation followed by Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, The Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Austria
- According to the report, the happiest countries are those “where people feel a sense of belonging, where they trust and enjoy each other and their shared institutions
Worst performers
The countries at the bottom of this year’s ranking are those afflicted by violent conflicts and extreme poverty, with Zimbabwe, South Sudan and Afghanistan classed as the world’s least happy countries.
Status of India
- India’s rank has dropped from 140 to 144 this year
- India’s neighbours Nepal(92, Pakistan(66), Bangladesh(107) and Sri Lanka(130) have gained good ranks ac compared to India
