Finland Ranked World’s Happiest Country

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

The Nordic country is famous for its extensive welfare system, high trust in authorities and low levels of inequality among its 5.5 million inhabitants.

While Ukraine’s ranking spiked from 98 to 92 this year, despite the Russian invasion, its overall score dropped 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 addef, 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.