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Comment by 082349872349872 | Hacker News Reader

IIUC, largely because of being surpassed by eastern europe.

There's not many Eastern European countries in the list (as in "former Eastern Bloc"), I can only see Czechia and Lithunia towards the bottom of the top 20. I would put Finland into the Northern Europe bucket, and only Lithunia had climbed one spot from 20 in 2023 to 19 in 2024.

Also Slovenia, but eastern europe as a whole (even if the rest did not surpass) has been improving according to the report; I had been trying to spin it optimistically for the US as being less a decline there than improvement elsewhere in the world...

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/worldhappiness/viz/20...

EDIT: here's 2023:

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/worldhappinessreport/...

{'czechia', 'slovenia', 'kuwait', 'united kingdom', 'costa rica', 'united arab emirates', 'lithuania', 'belgium'}

which I'd group as:

    eastern europe  CZ LT SI
    oil middle east AE KW
    western europe  BE
    latin america   CR
    airstrip one    UK

Looking at the map and by my own knowledge I think Slovenia is not eastern but central europe.

I understand it's largely a cultural and historically rooted designation moreso than a purely geographic one, but it is mildly amusing that Czechia is often colloquially classed as being in "Eastern Europe" while the same is never true of Austria.

space race for happiness?

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