Jamaica ranked 37th in the World Happiness Index 2021, and it is also the happiest nation in the Caribbean with score of 6.309.
The data is released by United Nations-supported on Friday,18 March 2021.
Notably, Jamaica improved a lot within a year, despite COVID-19 crises & alligations of the opposition.
The World Happiness Report usually examines the state of global happiness and rank countries by their happiness levels by examining elements such as GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, perceived corruption also generosity.
However, with the coronavirus pandemic globally, the report for 2021 centred primarily on the relationship between public well-being and the pandemic, which made collecting responses from around the 149 countries surveyed particularly challenging.
“This year’s Happiness Report was faced with an unusual challenge in trying to understand what effect the COVID pandemic has had on subjective well-being and vice versa,” the organisation behind the report said in a statement.
“Of all the factors usually supporting happiness, the most important for explaining coronavirus death rates were people’s trust in each other, and confidence in their governments,” it added.
Meantime, Jamaicans are perceived to be significantly happier than people from the island of Hispaniola, with the Dominican Republic stood at 73 — compared to 68 last year & Haiti ranked close to the bottom at 143, compared to 142 last year.
Interestingly, Trinidad and Tobago, which ranked 42 on the list last year, was not included on this year’s list, along with most Caribbean islands, including Cuba, Puerto Rico and countries in the Leeward and Windward chains.
Other Central American countries with Caribbean shores ranked higher than Jamaica, with Costa Rica ranked at 16, Guatemala at 30, and Mexico at 36.
Panama, Colombia, Nicaragua and Honduras were exceptions, scoring lower than Jamaica at 41, 52, 55 and 59, respectively.
With the survey ranking Finland as the happiest country, the top five was rounded out by Denmark (2), Switzerland (3), Iceland (4) and the Netherlands (5).
The top 10 also includes Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Austria.
The United States saw its happiness rating slip slightly from 18 to 19, two places below the United Kingdom at 17.
At the bottom of the list of 149 countries was Afghanistan, with a score of 2.523.
The African nations of Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Botswana were also at the bottom of the listing.
