Taiwan ranked happiest country in East Asia
By Ching-Tse Cheng, Taiwan News, Staff Writer
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan has been ranked as the happiest country in East Asia and the 24th happiest in the world, according to the World Happiness Report 2021.
The report, released by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network for the United Nations, places Finland in the top spot for the fourth year in a row, followed by Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, and the Netherlands. Meanwhile, sitting at the bottom of the list are Rwanda, Zimbabwe, and Afghanistan.
Regionally, Taiwan ranked as the happiest country in East Asia and the second happiest in all of Asia, behind only Israel (12). It bested its East Asian neighbors Singapore (32), Japan (56), South Korea (62), Hong Kong (77), and China (84) to maintain its top spot since 2015.
As for other countries in Asia, Thailand and the Philippines each finished 54th and 61st, respectively. Behind them were Vietnam (79), Malaysia (81), Indonesia (82), Cambodia (114), and India (139).
The rankings include a total of 149 countries and are based on GDP per capita and healthy life expectancy, plus four factors from global surveys including social support, social freedom, generosity, and perceptions of corruption.
In the surveys, people were asked to give scores for how much social support they feel they have if something goes wrong, freedom to make their own life choices, their sense of how corrupt their society is, and how generous they are.
