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Finland has topped a list of the world's happiest nations for the sixth successive year.
The northern European nation was judged to be the happiest, according to the World Happiness Report 2023, an annual report published by United Nations' initiative, the Sustainable Solutions Network, since 2012.
Here's how they determine which nation is the happiest, and where Australia is ranked:
How are the different countries ranked?
To measure happiness, the report uses survey data taken from the Gallup World Poll asking respondents from each country to evaluate their life satisfaction over the previous three years.
Specifically, these life evaluations ask survey respondents to evaluate their current life, from 0 to 10, in comparison to the life they'd ideally like to be living.
"It asks respondents to think of a ladder, with the best possible life for them being a 10 and the worst possible life being a 0," the report says.
"They are then asked to rate their own current lives on that 0 to 10 scale."
This year's report is based on the three-year average of these life evaluations taken in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
So they are particularly instructive of how happy specific national populations felt during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Gallup World Poll typically takes a sample of 1,000 respondents from each country.
What are the least-happy countries?
Afghanistan, which came 137th, was ranked the least-happy country, followed by Lebanon, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo, Botswana, Malawi, Comoros and Tanzania.
How does Australia rank?
Australia ranks in 12th place, just behind New Zealand and Austria, and ahead of Canada, Ireland, US and Germany.
What trends were recorded?
According to the report, most populations around the world continue to be remarkably resilient, despite several crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, global energy crisis, high inflation and the war in Ukraine.
They base this conclusion on the fact that the 2020 to 2022 global life evaluation averages remain just as high as those in the pre-pandemic years of 2017 to 2019.
More generally, it says people are happier living in countries where the gap between the happiest and the unhappiest respondents in a nation is smaller.
The report says the same nations typically appear in the top-20 list year after year.
One exception is Lithuania, which has risen over the past six years from being ranked 52nd in 2017 to number 20 in this year's report.