Happy days? Maybe not

Send in the frowns – our happiness levels tumble down world rankings

IF YOU get the feeling things seem a bit more glum than usual in this country, it appears that you may be right.

For as a country our happiness ranking in the world has dropped from the 14th cheeriest nation to 17th, a UN-sponsored report shows.

But at least we’re still in the 20 happiest countries in the world.

Finland remains the world’s happiest country for the seventh year running in the World Happiness Report.

Fellow Nordic countries Denmark, Iceland and Sweden also kept their places among the ten most cheerful.

Afghanistan, plagued by a humanitarian catastrophe since the US pulled out and the Taliban regained control in 2020, stayed at the bottom of the 143 countries surveyed.

It was also found that for the first time since the report was published more than a decade ago, the US and Germany have dropped out of the 20 happiest nations, with the former in 23rd this year and the latter 24th.

The sharpest decline since 200610 was noted in Afghanistan, Lebanon and Jordan, while Eastern European countries Serbia, Bulgaria and Latvia reported the biggest increases.

The happiness ranking is based on individuals’ self-assessed evaluations of life satisfaction, as well as GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity and corruption.

However, a leading anthropologist who studies societal behaviour advised to treat the report findings with caution.

Assessing Ireland’s ranking, anthropologist Dr Jamie Saris, of Maynooth University, said: ‘I would take this happiness index with a very big grain of salt.

‘You look at Ireland right now, people are spending money, you look at the birth rate. Is that going up?

‘There’s a whole range of those kind of things that Ireland looks more than OK on, we’re absolutely doing OK.’

Dr Saris added: ‘Ireland doesn’t have a war, it has problems but people aren’t leaving Ireland because of persecution.’

‘Take this with a big grain of salt’