Mexico moves up the 2023 World Happiness Report

The new UN World Happiness report has seen Mexico rise to 26th place on the list of the world’s happiest countries. (Bernandino Hernández/Cuartoscuro)

By Mexico News Daily

Mexicans have grown happier since 2020, according to the latest United Nations report on world happiness. 

The country has moved up 10 places, to the 26th position on the list of the world’s happiest nations.

Social support has been key to Mexico’s rise through the rankings in 2023. (Crisanta Espinosa Aguilar/Cuartoscuro)

The report, published by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, ranks 137 countries by their average life evaluations over the preceding years — in this case, the three years of the Covid-19 pandemic, from 2020 to 2022. 

Finland topped the list as the happiest country for the sixth consecutive year, followed by its Nordic neighbors Denmark and Iceland. At the other end, Lebanon (136th) and war-torn Afghanistan (137th) remain the two gloomiest countries in the survey. 

Amongst the big winners, Israel moved from ninth to fourth, with the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg and New Zealand rounding out the top 10.

Despite the pandemic, the report said that life evaluations have been “remarkably resilient,” with global averages close to the same levels as the pre-pandemic years of 2017–2019. 

“Even during these difficult years, positive emotions have remained twice as prevalent as negative ones, and feelings of positive social support twice as strong as those of loneliness,” John Helliwell, one of the authors of the World Happiness Report, said in a press release. 

“Benevolence to others, especially the helping of strangers, which went up dramatically in 2021, stayed high in 2022,” Helliwell told CNN in an interview.

Encouragingly, social support was twice as prevalent as was loneliness in seven key countries across six global regions, including Mexico. 

“The importance of these positive social relations helps further to explain the resilience of life evaluations during times of crisis,” the report said.  

On March 1, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography also reported that Mexican moods had returned to pre-pandemic levels. 

With reports from The World Happiness Report and CNN