The Netherlands Has Reclaimed Fifth Place On The World Happiness Report
This year the annual World Happiness Report had an additional focus - the covid-19 pandemic and the way in which countries dealt with the virus,
Amsterdammers are probably united in the opinion that last year was not the best year to live in the city. The pandemic made life pretty stressful and lockdown after lockdown made it pretty boring, at times. However, despite this, the Netherlands has been named the fifth happiest country in the world according to the World Happiness Report.
The report uses Gallup World Poll data, which is compiled using the opinions of respondents from different countries. They are asked questions about things like quality of life, contentedness, and this year there were also questions related to the pandemic.
Last year the Netherlands fell short of fifth place but this year it’s back in the top five behind Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland. The Netherlands achieved a score of 7,415, compared to Finland’s 7,821 and Afghanistan’s 2,404. Just above Afghanistan, which scored the lowest of all the countries, was Lebanon and Zimbabwe.
You can read the full report here, but there are the top ten positions this year:
- Finland
- Denmark
- Iceland
- Switzerland
- The Netherlands
- Luxembourg
- Sweden
- Norway
- Israel
- New Zealand
It’s no coincidence that the world’s richest countries tend to be higher up on the list, with the world’s poorest countries ranking lowest. However, war and corruption, or the absence of such factors, plays a huge role in the rankings too. On the flipside, freedom, social support and life expectancy really bolster a country’s score in these ratings. It seems that the Netherlands has a nice strong score across the board, but you can check out the scores for each category here.