World Happiness Report 2022

Started in 2012, the World Happiness Report 2022 celebrated its 10 year anniversary this year. The change seen in these ten years regarding the awareness around mental well being of people and general happiness around the world has been monumental. Today’s generation seems to be moving in the trajectory where Happiness would be the more crucial factor than the capitalistic output of a certain task. In the light of these developments in the mental health awareness field, the World Happiness Report is an interesting if not useful report to reflect upon the changes our society sees and how the definition of happiness evolves constantly with these changes.

Agency behind the World Happiness Report 2022

United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network is the agency responsible for publishing the World Happiness report every year since its inception in 2012. This year’s report marked the ten year anniversary of the world happiness report.

Theme of 2022 report

Pandemic on such a global level seemed like something fictitious till it happened and it’s hard to imagine any part of life which remains untouched by the Pandemic. Following the cue, World Happiness Report 2022 on its tenth anniversary views World Happiness through a lens tinted with the pandemic conditions. The official title of chapter two of the report “Happiness, benevolence and trust during covid-19 and beyond” explains pretty much the whole theme of this year’s report. It’s more than just about how happiness evolved or got affected because of this pandemic but also now that we as a society are moving towards the ‘new normal’ and adjusting around the pandemic and its various waves and their constant threats, what would happiness mean then and how it will further evolve on a societal level.

Factors taken in consideration to calculate ranks this year

The three indicators taken to calculate ranks for this year’s world happiness report are: Life evaluations, positive emotions and negative emotions.

Taking inspiration from its predecessor world happiness report 2021, this year’s report focuses on daily emotions which are calculated into the positive and negative emotions indicators to emphasize and display the effects of covid-19 pandemic and the alteration to daily life it has caused since.

Life evaluations is the more descriptive and stable indicator compared to the other two as it reflects the quality of life rather than tumultuous emotions individuals may feel one day but not the next. Life evaluations indicator provided a way to quantize the general quality of living of people in one country and compare it with another country.

The factors taken were- Gdp per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, Dystopia, freedom to make life choices, perception of corruption and generosity.

Overview of trends

It was observed and reaffirmed what the last year’s report suggested that life satisfaction has changed for people of different age groups during the covid-19 pandemic. Even though the mortality rate is higher for people above 60, the life satisfaction is also much better than the pre-pandemic conditions for individuals above 60. On the other hand, youth suffers loss in life satisfaction by a significant percentage.

The rank of India in the World Happiness report

Out of the 146 countries that were ranked in this report, the rank of India in the World Happiness report is 136 this year. India has improved its position by 3 ranks as it scored 139th rank in the same report last year.

Ranks of other notable countries

Fifth time in a row, Finland comes out to be the country with the happiest population followed by Denmark.

Afghanistan got placed on the last 146th spot on the list of happiness making it to be the unhappiest country. 

Three of the Balkan countries namely Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania showed the biggest gains in happiness rank.

Conclusion

This year’s rankings were heavily affected by two factors in general- Trust in public institutions and Military conflict. The countries facing military conflict and whose government’s are believed to be more corrupted ranked lower on the list and faced many deaths as well which were well escalated by the pandemic and poor health conditions in those areas. On the other hand, countries whose citizens place trust in the public institutions suffered the least deaths as well as loss of emotional/mental health during the pandemic. 

The rank of India in the world happiness report is 136 which improved from last year but is nowhere near the ideal rank a country could hope for.

The world happiness report can be taken in as a positive critique by the world leaders and institutions and even the general public to reflect upon their shortcomings, enhance their strengths and to get motivated in building better quality of life for people around the world and focus more and more on the happiness of individuals. Policies can be framed around the findings of this report and its various editions in the past to see what people value when it comes to life satisfaction.

Findings presented in the report such as interest in happiness and mental well being getting increased over the last ten years whereas interest in gdp and income becoming less frequent is an indicator that we’re afterall moving in the right direction of putting the well being of people above the capitalistic gains.