Israel Ranked World’s Fourth Happiest Country

Israel is the fourth happiest country in the world, according to a report by a U.N. office on happiness. The study released by the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network is based on data from global surveys of people in more than 150 countries.

Countries are ranked for their level of happiness based on their average life evaluation over the previous three years, in this case 2020 to 2022.

The report identifies the happiest nations, those at the very bottom of the happiness scale, and all those in between, as well as the factors that tend to lead to greater happiness.

For the sixth year in a row, Finland is the happiest country in the world, while Denmark and Iceland complete the podium. In general, the Nordic countries all score highly on the criteria the report uses to reach its conclusions: healthy life expectancy, GDP per capita, social support, low corruption, a generous community where people care for each other, and freedom to make key life decisions.

Israel moves up to fourth place this year, from ninth place last year. The Netherlands (fifth), Switzerland (eighth), Luxembourg (ninth) and New Zealand (10th) are also in the top 10.

The WHR also includes data for the “State of Palestine.” For the Palestinians, the picture is far less encouraging. They rank 99th on the list of happiest countries, beating out only a few nations such as Morocco, Iran and Turkey.

According to the report, global benevolence is about 25% higher than its pre-pandemic level.

“Benevolence toward others, especially helping strangers, which increased dramatically in 2021, remained high in 2022,” said John Helliwell, one of the report’s authors, in an interview with CNN.

The report also states that global happiness did not suffer during the three years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Even during these difficult years, positive emotions remained twice as prevalent as negative emotions, and feelings of positive social support twice as strong as feelings of loneliness,” Helliwell said.