Young people becoming less happy than their elders: report

A recent report has unveiled that young people have been less happy than their elders in recent years, especially in the United States, Canada, and some Western European countries.

The World Happiness Report, an annual barometer of well-being in 140 nations coordinated by Oxford University’s Wellbeing Research Centre, Gallup, and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, showed “disconcerting drops in youth happiness.

As per the report, Pakistan maintained its position at 108th, and India continued to rank at 126th in the latest World Happiness Report, sponsored annually by the United Nations.

The report confirmed Finland as the happiest country globally for the seventh consecutive year. Other Nordic nations, including Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden, also secured their spots within the top 10 happiest countries.

The top 10 was rounded out by Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Australia, each maintaining high happiness rankings.

At the lower end of the scale, Afghanistan remained the least happy of the 143 countries evaluated, a status attributed to ongoing humanitarian crises following the Taliban’s return to power in 2020.

A notable shift in this year’s report was the absence of the United States and Germany from the top 20 happiest countries, ranking 23rd and 24th, respectively.  This is the first instance of such a ranking since the report’s inception over 10 years ago. 

Meanwhile, Costa Rica and Kuwait made their debut in the top 20, securing the 12th and 13th positions.

The report highlighted a significant observation: none of the world’s largest countries featured among the happiest nations.

The happiness ranking relies on individuals’ self-assessed evaluations of life satisfaction, along with several other factors including GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and levels of corruption.

In a new development this year, a distinct list of countries ranked by age groups was introduced. 

Lithuania emerged as the top-ranking country for happiness among individuals under 30 years old. Notably, Pakistan secured the 107th position, while India and Bangladesh followed closely at 127th and 128th respectively.

The four countries in the NANZ group – the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – all have rankings for the young that are much lower than for the old, with the biggest discrepancies in the United States and Canada where the gap is 50 places or more. 

These gaps have mainly arisen since 2010, and probably involve some mix of generational and age effects. 

There are many more countries where the rankings for happiness in young people are more than 40 places higher than for the old, mainly in Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America. 

The biggest gap is in Croatia, where the ranking for the young is 66 places higher than for the old. There are gaps of 50 or more places for Bulgaria, Moldova, and Serbia, and between 40 and 50 places in Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Paraguay. 

There are clearly generational as well as age effects at play here as well, as the older populations of Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro bear the most scars from the early 1990s wars and genocide following the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.