Mexicans are ranked 24 out of 156 in a ranking that assesses the level of happiness of countries based on their GDP per capita, social support, life expectancy, citizen freedom of choice, generosity and perception of corruption.
This is according to the 2018 World Happiness Report that the UN Network for Sustainable Development (UN) draws up each year, which was made public this Wednesday.
In this edition, Finland leads the list and Burundi closes it.
Mexico is the worst qualified country in perception of corruption among the OECD countries and almost half of its population is in a situation of poverty. Even so, it climbed a position in the world happiness ranking compared to last year.
In addition, it became the second happiest country in Latin America, after Costa Rica, in 13th place.
Mexico overtook Chile (25), Brazil (28) and Argentina (29), which remained in the second, third and fourth positions for Latin America, respectively, last year.
The last position in the region is for Venezuela (102), the country that went down the most places in the world, surpassing the fall of civil war nations such as Syria and Yemen.
“There is no doubt that the difficulties of the economic crisis, the political polarization, the high degree of violence, migration and the separation of families are affecting the well-being of Venezuelans,” said the report based on Gallup surveys between 2015 and 2017.
On the other hand, Nicaragua was the Latin American country whose score rose the most and Costa Rica, first in the region, outperforms developed nations such as Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom.
However, the report states that many Latin Americans reported having been victims of a crime in the last year, highlighting 20% of respondents in Mexico and more than 15% in Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.
2018 World Hapinness Report (UN)
World Trends
Finland is the happiest nation in the world, Burundi the least and the people of the United States are less and less happy as their country economy grows more and more.
Even with their harsh and dark winters, the Finns said that access to nature, safety, child care, good schools and free health were among the best things in their country.
Finland dethroned Norway and jumped from the fifth to the first place in 2017. The top ten places this year, as always dominated by the Nordic countries, are Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Holland, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia.
The United States got in the 18th position, four positions under its 2017 location. The United Kingdom got in the 19th place, while the United Arab Emirates, in the twentieth.
One of the chapters of the report deals with recent health problems such as obesity, depression and drug addiction. In the United States in particular, these factors have grown faster than in most other countries.
Although per capita income has risen sharply in the last fifty years, happiness has been affected by the weakening of social assistance networks, the perceived rise in corruption in government and business, and less confidence in public institutions and political parties.
For the first time since 2012, when the report began, the text included a measure of the happiness of immigrants born in foreign territory in 117 countries. In the first place comes Finland again, while the last place went to Syria, trapped in a civil war that has lasted for years.
Source: forbes.com.mx
