Lithuania ranked world’s happiest country for young people

Lithuania took the top spot for people under the age of 30 in the UN-sponsored annual World Happiness Report. 

However, the country placed 44th for people over 60 in the report, which has ranked countries by generation for the first time.

Neighbouring Latvia and Estonia are ranked 31st and 44th for their under-30 populations, and 51st and 35th for older people, respectively.

In the overall rankings, Lithuania rose one position to number 19 this year and remains the leader among the three Baltic countries, with Estonia in 34th place and Latvia in 46th.

Unlike its neighbours, Lithuania has been steadily climbing up the happiness rankings since 2017, when it placed 52nd.

While the top 10 countries remain much the same as they were before the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been more change in the next 10 spots, with Eastern European countries, including Lithuania, registering the biggest increases, due mainly to happiness among young people, according to the report.

Finland tops the overall rankings for the seventh successive year.

For the first time since the report was published more than a decade ago, the United States and Germany were not among the 20 happiest nations, coming in 23rd and 24th respectively.

Afghanistan, which has been facing a humanitarian catastrophe since the Taliban regained control in 2020, stayed at the bottom of the 143 countries surveyed.

First published in 2012, the report ranks around 150 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be.

It is prepared in partnership with the polling agency Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

Source: www.lrt.lt