SINGAPORE: In Singapore news today, the country has taken pole position yet again for Asia when it comes to happiness. The 2024 World Happiness Report, released on Mar 20 (Wednesday), shows that the Little Red Dot came up on top in the continent for the second year in a row.
Worldwide, however, Singapore has ranked 30th out of 143 countries, with countries in Scandinavia taking top spots.
The report says that Finland is the happiest country in the world for the seventh successive year, and Denmark and Iceland take second and third place respectively. Sweden comes in fourth, and Israel rounds out the top five.
At the other end of the scale in the bottom five are Congo, Sierra Leone, Lesotho, and Lebanon, with Afghanistan in the last place.
In Asia, the top five are Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines.
“The ten countries of Southeast Asia, with Indonesia the largest and Singapore the smallest, show a declining structure of happiness across age groups and a gender difference favouring young females, with the largest contribution to this effect coming from Singapore,” the report notes.
Singapore’s results show a variance across generations. Among those aged below 30, Singapore ranked 54th on the list, while among those aged 60 and above, the country ranked 26th.
The report added that among generations, those born before 1965 are happier, on average than those who were born in 1980 onward. The older generation’s life satisfaction increases with age, but for millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, it decreases with each year of age.
Lithuania has the top marks for happiness for those under the age of 30, and Denmark has the highest levels of happiness for those aged 60 and over.
Interestingly, the United States is no longer in the top 20 happiest countries, the first time for this to happen since the reports began to be published in 2012. This is largely due to a big decrease in the happiness levels of people under the age of 30.
The following factors were taken into account for the report: GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, generosity, and perception of corruption.
“We found some pretty striking results. There is a great variety among countries in the relative happiness of the younger, older, and in-between populations. Hence the global happiness rankings are quite different for the young and the old, to an extent that has changed a lot over the last dozen years,” said Prof John F Helliwell, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia, and a founding Editor of the World Happiness Report. /TISG
Read also: Singapore tops Southeast Asia in women-led startup landscape