Pakistanis have been the happier nation than India with a big margin on the latest World Happiness Report released on Monday.

The report, which is a publication of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, draws on global survey data from people in more than 150 countries. Countries are ranked on happiness based on their average life evaluations over the three preceding years, in this case 2020 to 2022.

Pakistan mired by a string of problems still ranked at 103 while India which is in much better shape stands at 136th place on World Happiness Index 2023. 

For the sixth year running, Finland was named the world's happiest country in an annual UN-sponsored index that saw acts of kindness grow in Ukraine despite the Russian invasion.

With thousands of lakes and near endless forests, the Nordic country is known for its extensive welfare system, high trust in authorities and low levels of inequality among its 5.5 million inhabitants.

While Ukraine's ranking improved from 98 to 92 this year, despite the Russian invasion, its overall score fell from 5.084 to 5.071, on a scale of zero to 10.

Professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, an editor of the report, said there had been an "extraordinary rise in fellow feeling across Ukraine" despite what the report called a "magnitude of suffering and damage in Ukraine" since the 2022 invasion.

Last year "benevolence grew sharply in Ukraine but fell in Russia," the report found, referring to acts like helping strangers or making donations.

The report also cited a "much stronger sense of common purpose, benevolence and trust in Ukrainian leadership" than after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

Northern Europe once again dominated the top spots -- with Denmark in second place followed by Iceland.

Israel occupied fourth position, up five spots from last year.

While the same countries typically top the list each year, Baltic countries are rising rapidly towards Western European levels, the authors said.

Knocking France off the 20th spot, Lithuania became the only new country in the top 20 with Estonia in at number 31, up from 66 in 2017.

War-scarred Afghanistan, which has occupied the bottom spot on the table since 2020, saw its humanitarian crisis deepen since the Taliban government took power in 2021 following the US-led military pullout.

The World Happiness Report, first published in 2012, is based on people's own assessment of their happiness, as well as economic and social data.

The report considers six key factors: social support, income, health, freedom, generosity, and absence of corruption.

It assigns a happiness score based on an average of data over a three-year period.

“Benevolence to others, especially the helping of strangers, which went up dramatically in 2021, stayed high in 2022,” John Helliwell, one of the authors of the World Happiness Report, said in an interview with CNN.

And global happiness has not taken a hit in the three years of the Covid-19 pandemic. Life evaluations from 2020 to 2022 have been “remarkably resilient,” the report says, with global averages basically in line with the three years preceding the pandemic.

“Even during these difficult years, positive emotions have remained twice as prevalent as negative ones, and feelings of positive social support twice as strong as those of loneliness,” Helliwell said in a news release.

The report, which is a publication of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, draws on global survey data from people in more than 150 countries. Countries are ranked on happiness based on their average life evaluations over the three preceding years, in this case 2020 to 2022.

The report, which was released on Monday, identifies the happiest nations, those at the very bottom of the happiness scale and everything in between, plus the factors that tend to lead to greater happiness. March 20 is the International Day of Happiness, a day designated by the United Nations that’s marking its 10th anniversary in 2023.

Six-year winning streak for world’s happiest nation

For the sixth year in a row, Finland is the world’s happiest country, according to World Happiness Report rankings based largely on life evaluations from the Gallup World Poll.

The Nordic country and its neighbors Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Norway all score very well on the measures the report uses to explain its findings: healthy life expectancy, GDP per capita, social support, low corruption, generosity in a community where people look after each other and freedom to make key life decisions.

But since we can’t all move to Finland, is there something other societies can learn from these rankings?

“Is it, are they doing things that we wish we’d seen before and we can start doing? Or is it something unique about their climate and history that make them different? And fortunately, at least from my perspective, the answer is the former,” said Helliwell, who is a professor emeritus at the Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia.

Taking a holistic view of the well-being of all the components of a society and its members makes for better life evaluations and happier countries.

“The objective of every institution should be to contribute what it can to human well-being,” the report says, which includes accounting for future generations and preserving basic human rights.

Israel moves up to No. 4 this year from its No. 9 ranking last year. The Netherlands (No. 5), Switzerland (No. 8), Luxembourg (No. 9) and New Zealand (No. 10) round out the top 10.

Australia (No. 12), Canada (No. 13), Ireland (No. 14), the United States (No. 15) and the United Kingdom (No. 19) all made it into the top 20.

While the same countries tend to appear in the top 20 year after year, there’s a new entrant this year: Lithuania.

The Baltic nation has been climbing steadily over the past six years from No. 52 in 2017 to No. 20 on the latest list. And the other Baltic countries, Estonia (No. 31) and Latvia (No. 41), have been climbing in the ranks, too.

“It’s essentially the same story that’s playing out in the rest of Central and Eastern Europe,” Helliwell said.

Countries in those regions “probably have normalized that post-1990 transition and [are] feeling more solid in their new identity” as the years pass, he said.

France dropped out of the top 20 to No. 21 in this year’s report.

Nations ranked lower for happiness

At the very bottom of the list is Afghanistan at No. 137. Lebanon is one rank above at No. 136. Average life evaluations in these countries are more than five points lower (on a scale from 0 to 10) than in the 10 happiest countries.