PH a less happy country at 76th place in the world – report

A Filipina smiles as she displays a Philippine flag during an event at the Luneta Grandstand. (AFP)

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines was a less happy country in 2022 as it moved down from the 60th to 76th rank in the annual survey that measures the level of happiness of people across the globe.

According to the World Happiness Report 2023, the country was 76th among 137 countries, with a score of 5.523 – a decline from its 5.904 score in the previous year.

The report said the rankings were based on life evaluations from 2020 to 2022, noting that “all of the observations are drawn from years of high infection and deaths from COVID-19.”

Some 1,000 respondents per country were asked to evaluate their current life by using the image of a ladder – 10 was the best possible life from their perspective, while zero was the worst.

But according to the report, there was no survey information in the Philippines for 2022, so the country’s average score was based on 2020  (5.080) and 2021 (5.904) polls.

For the sixth consecutive year, Finland claimed the crown as the world’s happiest country with 7.804 points.

Trailing behind Finland were Denmark, Iceland, Israel, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg and New Zealand.

Afghanistan remains the least happy country in the world, according to the World Happiness Report, with a score that dipped from 2.404 to 1.859.

Lebanon was a rank above Afghanistan on the happiness roundup, scoring a total of 2.392.

“Only at the extremes do country rankings for live evaluations differ significantly from all others–Finland at the top and Afghanistan and Lebanon at the bottom,” the report read.

Six key factors were considered in the report to explain the self-reported levels of happiness around the world – social support, income, health, freedom, generosity, and absence of corruption.

“This year’s Happiness Report also shows that despite several overlapping crises, most populations around the world continue to be remarkably resilient, with global life satisfaction averages in the COVID-19 years 2020 to 2022 just as high as those in the pre-pandemic years,” it noted.

The World Happiness Report is published by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network through the Gallup World Poll data.

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