Thailand moved up one place to ranking 60th on the World Happiness Report 2023, while Finland has retained its top billing as the happiest country in the world for the sixth consecutive year.
The report ranks 137 countries. War-torn Afghanistan is the least happy country while Lebanon, Zimbabwe and Congo are not far behind.
The report, released on March 20 to mark the International Day of Happiness, is a publication of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. It assesses happiness based on various criteria, including social support, income, expectations of a healthy life, and perceptions of corruption.
Participants from each country joined the poll to evaluate their level of happiness on a sliding scale of zero to 10, in which zero means they are completely unsatisfied and 10 the opposite.
Thailand scored 5.843, making it the third happiest country in Southeast Asia after Singapore (6.587) and Malaysia (6.012).
When segmented into sub-factors, Thailand received its lowest score in terms of people’s perception of corruption (0.013), followed by generosity (0.291), healthy life expectancy (0.461), freedom to make life choices (0.624), social support (1.344) and GDP per capita (1.515).
