Canada ranks 15th in latest World Happiness Report; Finland takes top spot

Canadian Flags fly on the empty lawn of Parliament Hill, partially rendered as dirt amid the Centre Block construction project, on Canada Day in Ottawa, on Wednesday, July 1, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

TORONTO — While happiness may have felt far off as the COVID-19 pandemic raged across the globe, the latest World Happiness Report has ranked Canadians in 15th place, slipping down from the 10th position the previous year.

Finland once again takes the top spot as the happiest place on Earth, while Afghanistan sits at the bottom of the list.

The report is released annually by a team of independent researchers. They weigh six variables in the ranking: income, freedom, trust in government, healthy life expectancy, social support and generosity. As a result of the pandemic, researchers were not able to collect data from all 149 countries included in the report. They used information from 95 countries and used past data to estimate for countries with no data.

The report relies on surveys and polls to gather citizen opinions on their social supports, freedom and generosity.Canada ranks 15^th on a shortened list of surveyed countries and 14^th on a longer list of 95 countries from which researchers were able to collect data.

This year’s report focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and not surprisinglyit found that globally, well-being decreased from previous years.

“The pandemic's toll on negative emotions is clear, with 42 countries showing significantly higher frequency of negative emotions, compared to 9 where they were significantly less frequent,” the report said.

However, the happiest countries from previous years remained at the top, with the top five being Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland and Netherlands.

Globally, there was an immediate deterioration in mental health with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, with people already prone to mental health issues suffering more.

“It thus increased the existing inequalities in mental well-being,” said the report.

While there was a rebound in mental health shortly after the first decline, overall mental well-being remained low across the world.

The report hoped to find reasons why deaths from COVID-19 varied so widely between countries and regions and found that the answer may be cultural.

It found that keys to successfully driving back the pandemic relied on trust in government, learning lessons from previous epidemics like SARS and whether the head of the government was a woman.

The report also found that in countries where the citizens trusted each other, death rates were lower.

With files from Associated Press.