Belgians not the world’s happiest bunnies
Belgians this year come home in seventeenth position in the league table of the World Happiness Report. Clearly, Belgians are slightly happier bunnies than last year, because they rose two places, but the Finns remain the world’s happiest. For a sixth year in a row they feature on Number One!
Nordic nations occupy most of the top positions when it comes to happiness. The Finns are followed by the Danes, Icelanders, Israelis, the Dutch, the Swedes and the Norwegians. Researchers say that these countries continue to post very good scores despite the pandemic, the energy crisis and the war in Ukraine.
Happiness is a rather relative good. It’s hard to define and different people look at it in different ways. Researchers at opinion consultants Gallup decided to take six factors into account when drawing up their report: the social safety net, income, health, liberty, generosity and the absence of corruption.
Belgians are then clearly not the happiest folk on the planet. Their seventeenth place puts them in the vicinity of the Germans and the Czechs, but it could be a lot worse. Conflict and political unrest obviously have a big impact on people’s happiness. At the bottom of the ranking we find the peoples of Lebanon and Afghanistan.