These are the world’s 10 happiest countries in 2023 (and most of them are in Europe)

The enduring effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the war in Ukraine, and worldwide inflation made 2022 a year of global crises.

But the human resolve to be happy has been "remarkably resilient," says the 2023 World Happiness Report, which recorded global satisfaction averages as high as those in the pre-pandemic years.

The report, which draws on global survey data from people in more than 150 countries, placed Finland in the top position for the sixth year in a row, with a happiness score significantly ahead of all other countries.

The World Happiness Report rankings are largely based on life evaluations from the Gallup World Poll.

The six key variables the report quantifies are income (GDP per capita), social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and freedom from corruption. And the most common question to measure people’s well-being is: "Overall, how satisfied are you with your life these days?" To answer, people rely on a scale of 0-10 (0= completely dissatisfied, 10= completely satisfied).

The annual results of the report are always based on average life evaluations over the past three years.

There is a large gap between the happiest and unhappiest countries in the list, with the top countries being more tightly grouped than the bottom ones.

For countries in the top 10, for example, national life evaluation scores have an average gap of fewer than 0.7 points. In the bottom 10, however, the range of scores covers 2.1 points.

War-torn Afghanistan and Lebanon remain the two least happy countries, based on the indicators used by the report authors. Both countries have average life evaluations more than five points lower (on a scale running from 0 to 10) than the ten happiest