Vietnam ascends annual world happiness ranking

The report, released on Friday, two days before the annual International Day of Happiness, surveyed 5,485 Vietnamese to determine results.

This year, it ranks 146 countries based on several factors like real GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity and perceptions of corruption.

Particularly for this year's report, social media data has been used to capture people's emotions before and during Covid-19.

Twitter data in 18 countries showed strong increases in anxiety and sadness during Covid-19.

As shown in the report, published annually since 2012, Vietnam takes the lead in global patterns of experiencing calmness.

When asked whether people experienced calmness "during a lot of the day yesterday," 94.7 percent of surveyed Vietnamese say yes. They are followed by Jamaica (93.7 percent), the Philippines (92.7 percent), Kyrgyzstan (91.8 percent), and Finland (89.7 percent).

"The lesson of the World Happiness Report over the years is that social support, generosity to one another and honesty in government are crucial for wellbeing," report co-author Jeffrey Sachs was quoted by AFP as saying.

"World leaders should take heed," he said.

Finland continues to be the happiest country in the world this year, marking the fifth year in a row it has been on top.

It is followed by Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland.

From the other end, Afghanistan was ranked the unhappiest nation, followed by Lebanon, Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Botswana.