The Czech Republic ranks 16th among the happiest countries in the world

The Czech Republic ranks 16th among the happiest countries in the world and, in general, happiness in the Czech Republic seems to have continued a dramatic rise over the past decade, according to the World Happiness Report 2021.

2020 has been a year like no other. In spite of the effects of COVID-19, the Czech Republic moved up in the latest world happiness rankings and outranked the United States for the first time. Although emotions changed during the pandemic, the long-term satisfaction with life was less affected by the pandemic, according to the authors of the report.

Czech respondents rated their happiness and average life evaluations at an average of 6.9 in 2020. In general, ranking that was based not only on happiness but on alternative determinants, the Czech Republic has also advanced to 18th place from last year’s 19th position. Other factors taken into consideration included GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, or perceptions of corruption. In recent years, the Czech Republic has been steadily rising in these rankings – as a case in point, in 2016 it was the 27th, a year later the 21st and in 2019, Czechia ranked 20th.

The World Happiness Report, launched in 2012, is an annual survey of the UN Sustainable Development Network. The report evaluates 149 countries around the world on the basis of factors such as gross domestic product, life expectancy, level of corruption, social support or personal freedom. The 2021 report focused on the effects of COVID-19 and how people all over the world have coped. The measurement of subjective well-being relied on three main indicators: life evaluations, positive emotions, and negative emotions. The eventual happiness rankings are based on life evaluations, as the more stable measure of the quality of people’s lives and the World Happiness Report 2021 pays more attention than usual to specific daily emotions to better track how COVID-19 has altered different aspects of life.