For the fourth time in a row, Finland is the world's happiest country

When governments around the world introduced coronavirus restrictions requiring people to stand two metres apart, jokes in Finland started circulating: “Why can’t we stick to the usual four metres?”

Finns embrace depictions of themselves as melancholic and reserved — a people who mastered social distancing long before the pandemic. A popular local saying goes, “Happiness will always end in tears.”

But for four consecutive years, Finland has been named the happiest country in the world by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, which publishes an annual report evaluating the happiness of people around the world.

The World Happiness Report uses data from interviews of more than 350,000 people in 95 countries, conducted by Gallup. The rankings are based on how people rate their own happiness on a 10-point scale.

Questions included, “Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?”, “Did you learn or do something interesting yesterday?” and “Were you treated with respect all day yesterday?” Other questions relate to trust. Someone who tho­ught the police or strangers were “very likely” to return his or her lost wallet had, on average, a much higher life evaluation score than one who thou­ght the opposite, researchers found.

“We believe that these subjective, or self-perceived evaluations are a more reliable way to tell how good life is,” said Shun Wang, professor of the KDI School of Public Policy and Mana­gement in South Korea and one of the authors of the report.

@2021 The New York Times News Service