World Happiness Index - Topic of the Day

UPSC Exam Preparation: Topic of the Day – World Happiness Index

The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness. The World Happiness Report 2018 ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels, and 117 countries by the happiness of their immigrants.

• The World Happiness Report is a measure of happiness of various nations.
• United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network publishes the World Happiness Report.
• The report was published for the first time in 2012.
• The report takes into account Social support, freedom to make life choices, life expectancy and GDP per capita are taken into account, in the report, as indicators of happiness.

• In those surveys, people give scores from 1 to 10 on how much social support they feel they have if something goes wrong, their freedom to make their own life choices, their sense of how corrupt their society is and how generous they are.

World Happiness Report – 2018 March

• In the global list of the happiest countries, India has been placed at the 133rd rank. Its ranking has dropped from 122^nd rank, i.e, 11 places down from last year. India in 2016, was placed in the 118^th Its ranking is far behind the other neighboring countries such as China, Nepal and Pakistan.
• Among the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries,
  • Pakistan is ranked at 75^th position
  • Bhutan is ranked at 97th rank
  • Nepal has been placed at 101^st rank
  • Bangladesh is at 115th position
  • Sri Lanka is ranked at 116th position.
  • Afghanistan fared worse than India and is ranked 145th.
• Myanmar has been placed at 130th position.

Performance of various countries:

• Finland, which was ranked 5th last year, displacing Norway to be the world’s happiest country. Norway dropped to 2nd position in the index.
• The United States is now ranked at the 18^th position, dropping down 4 places from the 14^th rank last year, while the United Kingdom was ranked 20th respectively.
• The African countries occupied the bottom positions in the happiness index – Tanzania (153^rd rank), South Sudan (154^th rank), Central African Republic (155^th rank) and Burundi (156^th rank).

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