Finland is the happiest country in the world while India is all the way down at 133, behind Pakistan and Nepal, according to the World Happiness Report released on Wednesday.The report, released ahead of the International Day of Happiness on March 20, ranked 156 countries by their happiness levels, and 117 countries according to the happiness of their immigrants.
India fell 11 places from 2017, when it was ranked 122. Of all the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation countries, only war-torn Afghanistan was ranked behind India. Maldives was not featured in the global survey.
“All the top countries,” the report noted, “tend to have high values for all six of the key variables that have been found to support well-being: income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust and generosity.”
The authors of the report noted that the ten happiest countries also have the most content immigrants. “The closeness of the two rankings shows that the happiness of immigrants depends predominantly on the quality of life where they now live, illustrating a general pattern of convergence,” the report noted. “Immigrant happiness, like that of the locally born, depends on a range of features of the social fabric, extending far beyond the higher incomes traditionally thought to inspire and reward migration.”