India Ranks Below Nepal and Pakistan in the List of World’s Happiest Countries
- Lower satisfaction with living arrangements, perceived discrimination, and poor self-rated health were important factors associated with low life satisfaction among older Indians.
India and its neighbors in the subcontinent are among the least happiest countries, the World Happiness Report has revealed. In a list of 146 countries, India has ranked 128, falling three positions from last year. India lags behind its neighboring nations like Nepal (93) and Pakistan (108), while Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are just points away at 128 and 129, respectively.
The Nordic countries are in the top spots with Finland ranked first, followed by Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden. While the top ten countries remain largely unchanged, there has been much more action in the top twenty. Costa Rica and Kuwait are both new entrants to the top 20, at positions 12 and 13. The new entrants are matched by the departure of the United States and Germany from the top 20, dropping from 15 and 16 last year to 23 and 24 this year.
This year’s report is the first to include separate rankings by age group, and about life satisfaction among young people in some parts of the world. As between generations, those born before 1965 (Boomers and their predecessors) have life evaluations about one-quarter of a point higher than those born after 1980 (Millennials and Gen Z). Within each generation, life evaluations rise with age for those in the older generations and fall with age for the younger ones, with little age effect for those in between.
While the lower-middle class are the unhappiest in India, the young are the happiest, the report notes. Lower satisfaction with living arrangements, perceived discrimination, and poor self-rated health were important factors associated with low life satisfaction among older Indians, the report added.
In South Asia, “happiness is lowest in the middle age groups, especially for males, exposing a large middle age life evaluation gap favoring females, with a definite U-shape for males,” the report notes.
The report draws on global survey data from over 100,000 people in more than 140 countries which asked each participant to score their life as a whole, considering what they value. It is a partnership of Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), and an editorial board. Countries are ranked on happiness based on their average life evaluations over the three preceding years, in this case, 2021 to 2023
The rankings are based on a three-year average, “which often mutes the effect of “cataclysmic events happening during a particular year,” as CNN notes. It could be a reason why Israel is in the fifth spot.
The SDSN lists six factors that can explain the different levels of happiness — social support, GDP per capita, a healthy life expectancy, freedom to make choices, generosity, and perception of corruption.