Sri Lanka has become happier moving four notches up from last year’s ranking in the 2018 World Happiness report (WHR) released by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network for the United Nations on March 14.
Sri Lanka has moved up to 116th position with a score of 4.471 in the World Happiness Report 2018, which ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels, and 117 countries by the happiness of their immigrants.
The island was also ranked 43rd in the sub-category of best improvers from 2008-2010 to 2015-2017 with a change of 0.265 points on the score.
The report, released in advance of UN World Happiness Day on March 20, evaluated the countries on a number of factors including per capita income, social support, healthy life expectancy, social freedom, generosity and absence of corruption and assigned a score on a scale of zero to 10 with 10 representing the best possible life and 0 the worst.
The overall rankings of country happiness are based on the pooled results from Gallup World Poll surveys from 2015-2017, and show both change and stability.
The 2018 Report ranked Finland at the top of the list, followed closely by Norway, Denmark Iceland and Switzerland, Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia in the top ten.
In South Asia India ranked 133 on the happiness index, below all developed countries in the world, and in the bottom two of SAARC nations. Only Afghanistan ranked below India at 145th place. Elsewhere in South Asia Pakistan ranked 75th, Bhutan 97th, Nepal 101st and Bangladesh ranked a notch above Sri Lanka at 115th.
