World Happiness Report 2023 69 twenty, up more than 30 places since 2017. War-torn Afghanistan and Lebanon remain the two unhappiest countries in the survey, with average life evaluations more than five points lower (on a scale running from 0 to 10) than in the ten happiest countries. This year’s report uses three measures to study the inequality of happiness. The first is the happiness gap between the top and the bottom halves of the population. This gap is small in countries where almost everyone is very unhappy, and in the top countries where almost no one is unhappy. More generally, people are happier living in countries where the happiness gap is smaller. Happiness gaps globally have been fairly stable, although there are growing gaps in Africa. The second and third are measures of misery—the share of the population having life evaluations of 4 and below, and the share rating their lives at 3 and below. Globally, both of these measures fell slightly during the three COVID-19 years. The rest of the chapter helps to explain this resilience using four examples to suggest how trust and social support can support happiness during crises. COVID deaths. In 2020 and 2021, countries attempting to suppress community transmission had lower death rates without incurring offsetting costs elsewhere. Not enough countries followed suit, thus enabling new variants to emerge, such that in 2022, Omicron made elimination infeasible. While policy strategies, infections and death rates are now much alike in all countries, our new modelling shows that trust continues to be correlated with lower death rates, and total deaths over the three years are still much lower in the eliminator countries. Benevolence. One of the striking features of World Happiness Report 2022 was the globe-spanning surge of benevolence in 2020 and especially 2021. Data for 2022 show that prosocial acts are still about one-quarter more frequent than before the pandemic. Ukraine and Russia. Confidence in their national governments grew in 2022 in both countries, but much more in Ukraine than in Russia. Ukrainian support for Russian leadership fell to zero in all parts of Ukraine in 2022. Both countries shared the global increases in benevolence during 2020 and 2021. During 2022, benevolence grew sharply in Ukraine but fell in Russia. Despite the magnitude of suffering and damage in Ukraine, life evaluations in September 2022 remained higher than in the aftermath of the 2014 annexation, supported by a much stronger sense of common purpose, benevolence and trust in Ukrainian leadership. Social support. New data show that positive social connections and support in 2022 were twice as prevalent as loneliness in seven key countries spanning six global regions. They were also strongly tied to overall ratings of how satisfied people are with their relationships with other people. The importance of these positive social relations helps further to explain the resilience of life evaluations during times of crisis. Ukrainian support for Russia leadership fell to zero in 2020, in all parts of the country.
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