Nepal, 87th happiest country: UN report

Nepal has been placed in the 87th position on the list of 149 countries ranked by the UN World Happiness report 2021.

Finland has been ranked the first on the list with a score of 7.842 while Afghanistan ranks the last with a score of 2.523.

Finland has come out on top for the fourth consecutive year.

Likewise, China has been placed in the 84th position with a score of 5.339 while India has been ranked 139th with a score of 3.819.

Of the other members of SAARC countries, Maldives has been listed as the 89th happiest country with (5.198), Bangladesh 101st (5.025), Pakistan 105th (4.934) and Sri Lanka 129th (4.325) while Bhutan has not been included in the report.

The ninth World Happiness Report differs from yesteryear’s as COVID-19 has shaken, taken, and reshaped lives everywhere. 

The annual report, made by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, ranks 149 countries based on gross domestic product per person, healthy life expectancy and the opinions of residents. Surveys ask respondents to indicate on a 1-10 scale how much social support they feel they have if something goes wrong, their freedom to make their own life choices, their sense of how corrupt their society is and how generous they are.

The main purpose of the report is to measure and use subjective well-being to track and explain the quality of lives all over the globe, it has been reported. Due to the pandemic, the surveys were done in slightly fewer than 100 countries for this year's World Happiness Report, the ninth one compiled since the project started. Index rankings for the other nations were based on estimates from past data.

The results from both methods had European countries occupying nine of the top 10 spots on the list of the word's happiest places, with New Zealand rounding out the group. The top 10 countries are Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Austria.