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Israel ranked 12th happiest country in the world

Israel came out ahead of the US, Britain, and Canada.

By Aryeh Savir, TPS

Israel was ranked the 12th happiest country in the world in 2020, according to the World Happiness Report for 2021.

Israel came out ahead of the U.S., Britain, and Canada.

The report’s top 10 happiest countries this year are Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Luxemburg, New Zealand, and Austria.

The report’s least happy countries include Rwanda, Zimbabwe, and Afghanistan.

According to data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, over 90% of Israelis say they are happy or very happy with their lives.

The “World Happiness Report” is a survey of 149 countries about the state of global happiness. This year’s report, the 9th edition, was released over the weekend in Rome in advance of March 20th, the United Nation’s World Happiness Day.

The happiness scale measures factors including gross domestic product per person, life expectancy, freedom of choice, generosity, perceptions of corruption, and social support.

The Sustainable Development Solutions Network publishes the report, an initiative of the United Nations launched in 2012 to promote sustainable development on local, national, and global scales.

Leading experts across fields – economics, psychology, survey analysis, national statistics, health, public policy and more – describe how measurements of well-being can be effectively used to assess national progress.

Conducted during the year of a global pandemic, only small changes were perceived.

“Surprisingly there was not, on average, a decline in well-being when measured by people’s own evaluation of their lives,” said Professor John F. Helliwell of the University of British Columbia, one of the report’s editors.

“One possible explanation is that people see COVID-19 as a common, outside threat affecting everybody and that this has generated a greater sense of solidarity and fellow-feeling.”