Czechs rank among world’s happiest nations, Hungarians among unhappiest in Europe

Prague, Czech Republic – The Czech Republic has been named among the 20 happiest nations in the world, according to the World Happiness Report 2020.

Czech Republic among happiest nations in Europe

Ranked 19th worldwide and gaining one spot compared to last year, Czechs are the happiest nation in Central and Eastern Europe, far surpassing neighbouring Slovakia (37th, +1 compared to 2019) and Poland (43rd, -3).

Coming only at the 53rd position worldwide and despite moving up by 9 positions compared to last year, Hungary ranks among the unhappiest countries in the EU, with only a handful of countries (Latvia, Portugal, Greece, Croatia and Bulgaria) faring worse.

Hungary has nonetheless reported the world’s third biggest improvement in the level of happiness of its population over the past decade, topped only by the African countries of Benin and Togo.

Finland takes the top spot as the single happiest country on earth for the third year in a row, ahead of Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland and Norway. Among the top 10 most blissful nations on the globe, 9 of them are in Europe.

Top 20 happiest countries in the world:

1. Finland
2. Denmark
3. Switzerland
4. Iceland
5. Norway
6. Netherlands
7. Sweden
8. New Zealand
9. Austria
10. Luxembourg
11. Canada
12. Australia
13. United Kingdom
14. Israel
15. Costa Rica
16. Ireland
17. Germany
18. United States
19. Czech Republic
20. Belgium

Released annually around the date of the U.N.’s International Day of Happiness (March 20), the World Happiness Report takes into account a wide range of factors (GDP, social support from friends and relatives, generosity, perceived corruption, recent emotions, health and life expectancy, personal freedom to make life decisions, etc.) and aggregates the average results of surveys – particularly from the Gallup World Poll – conducted over the past three years in more than 150 countries.

Since its inception in 2012, four countries have taken the top spot: Denmark (2012, 2013 and 2016), Switzerland (2015), Norway (2017) and Finland (2018, 2019 and 2020).

The study also ranks the world’s 186 major cities according to the level of happiness of their inhabitants, with the top 5 comprising Helsinki (Finland), Aarhus (Denmark), Wellington (New Zealand), Zurich (Switzerland) and Copenhagen (Denmark).

Prague comes at the 44th position right after Paris, but once more well ahead of Bratislava (54th) and Budapest (103rd).  Warsaw wasn’t included in the city ranking.

According to the report, Kabul (Afghanistan), Sanaa (Yemen), Gaza (Palestine), Port-au-Prince (Haiti) and Juba (South Sudan) are the unhappiest cities in 2020.