Despite the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, which gripped the world in 2020, Finland was ranked as the world’s happiest nation for the fourth year in a row in an annual UN-sponsored report on Friday. Meanwhile, India claimed the 139th spot.

The World Happiness Report uses Gallup data, as researchers ask people in 149 countries to rate their own happiness and the measures, such as GDP, social support, personal freedom, and levels of corruption are also taken into account. These measures are then evaluated to give each nation a happiness score that is an average of the past three years.

Also Read | COVID-19 patients above 65 years of age more prone to reinfection, says study

This year’s data was compared, by the authors, to previous years’ averages to gauge the impact of the pandemic and “significantly higher frequency of negative emotions” in just over a third of the countries was found.

The top spots in the happiness index were claimed by European nations, as Denmark came second, followed by Switzerland, Iceland and the Netherlands.

New Zealand, falling one place to ninth, was again the only non-European nation in the top ten.

Also Read | US economic growth may rise to 6.5%, says Federal Reserve

Other climbers included Germany, up from 17th to 13th, and France, rising two to 21st.

The UK, meanwhile, fell from 13th to 17th place, while the US fell one spot to 19th.

African nations Lesotho, Botswana, Rwanda and Zimbabwe came at the bottom of the table, but ahead of Afghanistan which was classed as the world’s unhappiest nation this year.