FILE PHOTO by Abdul Basit © The Peninsula
Gaining three points in one year, Qatar has become the 29th happiest country in the world in 2019 according to World Happiness Report released yesterday by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), a global initiative of the United Nations.
Qatar, from 32nd position in 2018, jumped to 29th place in World Happiness Report 2019. In 2016, Qatar was ranked at the 36th position. In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, Qatar is the fourth happiest country.
Finland again took the top spot as the happiest country in the world according to three years of surveys taken by Gallup from 2016-2018 with Denmark at second position and Norway taking the third spot.
Other seven countries in top ten list of happiest countries of the world are as follows. Iceland (4), Netherlands (5), Switzerland (6), Sweden (7), New Zealand (8), Canada (9), and Austria at position (10).
Different variables including income, social support, healthy life expectancy at birth, freedom to make life choices, generosity etc. are counted for the happiness rankings.
The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness that ranks 156 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be. The report is produced by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network in partnership with the Ernesto Illy Foundation.
“This year, the Report analyzes how life evaluations and emotions, both positive and negative, have evolved over the whole run of the Gallup World Poll, starting in 2005-2006. For life evaluations at the national level, there have been more gainers than losers,” said a press brief on the official website of World Happiness Report.
It adds: “Among the 20 top gainers in life evaluations from 2005-2008 to 2016-2018, 10 are in Central and Eastern Europe, five are in sub-Saharan Africa, and three in Latin America. The 10 countries with the largest declines in average life evaluations typically suffered some combination of economic, political, and social stresses. The five largest drops since 2005-2008 were in Yemen, India, Syria, Botswana and Venezuela.”
World Happiness Report 2019 focuses on happiness and the community: how happiness has evolved over the past dozen years, with a focus on the technologies, social norms, conflicts and government policies that have driven those changes. Special chapters focus on generosity and pro-social behaviour, the effects of happiness on voting behaviour, big data, and the happiness effects of Internet use and addictions.
