Culture

New ranking shows Latin America's happiest (and saddest) countries

By ADN America Staff

March 22, 2022 12:53pm

Updated: March 22, 2022 1:21pm

The world is understandably on edge. Over the last two years, the global community has faced unprecedented challenges ranging from a global pandemic to war in Europe – but according to data from the newly released World Happiness Report, despite the tough times, kindness and overall happiness are surging globally.

John Helliwell, one of the report’s founding editors and a professor emeritus at the Vancouver School of Economics, told CNN Travel, “The big surprise was that globally, in an uncoordinated way, there have been very large increases in all the three forms of benevolence.”

As Helliwell notes, acts of kindness such as donating to charity, helping a stranger and volunteering are all up, “especially the help to strangers in 2021, relative to either before the pandemic or 2020, by a very large amount in all regions of the world.”

But in order to measure the country’s level of happiness, the researchers looked further than just benevolence; they also analyzed categories including a country’s GDP, social safety nets, life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity of the population and perceptions of internal and external corruption levels.

After reviewing the data, the researchers concluded that Afghanistan is the least happy country among the 149 countries surveyed with a happiness rate of just 2.5. On the other side of the spectrum, Finland ranked first as the happiest country in the world for the fourth year in a row with a score of 7.8.

In the Americas, Canada ranked as the happiest country at number 15 followed by the United States at number 16. But what about Latin America? Take a look below to see the happiest (and saddest) countries in the region.