World Happiness Report 2018 from Hungarian perspective – promising or shocking results?

By now, we know based on several previous reports that Hungarians are not the happiest people in the world. Still, an improving tendency can be witnessed when looking at this year’s research, reports Infostart.hu. The World Happiness Report 2018 measuring the state of global happiness in 156 countries worldwide, focused on other issues as well, such as changes seen in the level of happiness compared to previous years, health problems affecting the whole nation and the tolerance of countries towards immigrants. Here is what Hungary’s 69th position on the list means compared to the results of other countries.

World Happiness

The World Happiness Report was made based on the results of the Gallup World Poll surveys conducted between 2015 and 2017 in 156 countries. The general happiness of each nation was examined by taking into consideration the GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, social freedom, generosity and absence of corruption, can be read on Worldhappiness.report.

The final ranking of the countries shows the swapping of some places compared to previous years since Finland became the 1st moving up from its 5th position last year. Locals say that the best thing about their country is the proximity of nature, public safety, childcare facilities, good education and the free health care system. Norway and Denmark follow Finland, but Iceland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada, New-Zealand, Sweden and Australia are also among the TOP 10 countries.

Hungary became the 69th happiest country out of the 156, which means that it is in the middle race on the list.

Changes in the levels of happiness

The report, available here, also focused on the changes seen in the levels of happiness. Out of the 141 countries with data from 2008-2010 and 2015-2017, significant changes have been experienced in 114. These were both improvements and declines comparing the results of previous years. On this list, Hungary became the 9th country showing the most development with an increase of +0.810 on a 10-point scale. This is not too bad if we consider that the greatest improvement; that of Togo was +1.191.