Page 10 - IAV Digital Magazine #446

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Happiest Country On Earth Is Finland
Vatican City: Reuters
Finland is the world’s happiest country, accord- ing to an annual survey issued on Wednesday that found Americans were getting less happy even as their country became richer.
Burundi came bottom in the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s (SDSN) 2018 World Happiness Report which ranked 156 coun- tries according to things such as GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, social freedom, generosity and absence of cor- ruption.
Taking the harsh,
dark winters in their stride, Finns said access to nature, safety, childcare, good schools and free healthcare were among the best things about in their country.
“I’ve joked with the other Americans that we are living the American dream here in Finland,” said Brianna Owens, who moved from the United States andisnowa teacher in Espoo, Finland’s second biggest city with a population of around 280,000.
“I think every- thing in this soci- ety is set up for people to be suc- cessful, starting with university and transporta- tion that works really well,”
Owens told Reuters.
Finland, rose from fifth place last year to oust Norway from the top spot. The 2018 top-10, as ever dominated by the Nordics, is: Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Netherlands Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia.
The United States came in at 18th, down from 14th place last year. Britain was 19th and the United Arab Emirates 20th.
One chapter of the 170-page report is dedicat- ed to emerging health problems such as obesity, depression and
the opioid crisis, particularly in the United States where the preva- lence of all three has grown faster than in most other countries.
While U.S. income per capi- ta has increased markedly over the last half cen- tury, happiness has been hit by weakened social support networks, a perceived rise in corruption in government and business and declining confi- dence in public institutions.
“We obviously have a social cri- sis in the United States: more inequality, less trust, less confi- dence in govern- ment,” the head of the SDSN, Professor Jeffrey Sachs of New
York’s Columbia University, told Reuters as the report was launched at the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
“It’s pretty stark right now. The signs are not good for the U.S. It is getting richer and richer but not getting happier.”
Asked how the current political situation in the United States could affect future happiness reports, Sachs said:
“Time will tell, but I would say that in general that when confidence in government is low, when per- ceptions of cor- ruption are high, inequality is high and health condi- tions are worsen- ing ... that is not conducive to good feelings.”
For the first time since it was start- ed in 2012, the report, which uses a variety of polling organiza- tions, official fig- ures and research meth- ods, ranked the
happiness of for- eign-born immi- grants in 117 countries. Finland took top honors in that category too, giving the country a statisti- cal double-gold status.
The foreign-born were least happy in Syria, which has been mired in civil war for seven years. “The most strik- ing finding of the report is the remarkable con- sistency between the happiness of immigrants and the locally born,” said Professor John Helliwell of Canada’s University of British Columbia.
“Although immi- grants come from countries with very different lev- els of happiness, their reported life evaluations con- verge towards those of other residents in their new countries,” he said. “Those who move to happier countries gain, while those who move to less happy countries lose.”
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