According to the UN World Happiness Report, Finland remained the world’s happiest country for the seventh straight year.

Afghanistan, plagued by a humanitarian catastrophe since the Taliban regained control in 2020, stayed at the bottom of the 143 countries surveyed.

Finland is followed by Denmark and Iceland. 

All five Nordic countries are in the top 10. 

But in the next 10, there is more change, with the transition countries of Eastern Europe rising in happiness (especially Czech Republic, Lithuania and Slovenia). Partly for this reason the United States and Germany have fallen to 23 and 24 in the rankings.

The US has fallen out of the top 20 for the first time since the World Happiness Report was first published in 2012.

India is ranked at 126, the same as last year.

The report was released on the UN’s International Day of Happiness.

Top 10 happiest countries in the world:

i) Finland

ii) Denmark

iii) Iceland

iv) Sweden

v) Israel

vi) Netherlands

vii) Norway

viii) Luxembourg

ix) Switzerland

x) Australia.

World Happiness Report

• The World Happiness Report is a partnership of Gallup World Poll, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and the WHR’s Editorial Board.

• The World Happiness Report reflects a worldwide demand for more attention to happiness and well-being as criteria for government policy. 

• It reviews the state of happiness in the world today and shows how the science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness.

How are the rankings done?

• Life evaluations from the Gallup World Poll provide the basis for the annual happiness rankings. They are based on answers to the main life evaluation question. 

• The Cantril Ladder 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. 

• They are then asked to rate their own current lives on that 0 to 10 scale. 

• Rankings are based on a three-year average of each population’s average assessment of their quality of life. 

• Interdisciplinary experts from the fields of economics, psychology, sociology and beyond then attempt to explain the variations across countries and over time using factors such as GDP, life expectancy, having someone to count on, a sense of freedom, generosity and perceptions of corruption.

• These factors help to explain the differences across nations, while the rankings themselves are based only on the answers people give when asked to rate their own lives.

Other key points of the report:

• Serbia (37th) and Bulgaria (81st) have had the biggest increases in average life evaluation scores since they were first measured by the Gallup World Poll, and this is reflected in climbs up the rankings between World Happiness Report 2013 and this 2024 edition of 69 places for Serbia and 63 places for Bulgaria.

• The next two countries showing the largest increases in life evaluations are Latvia (46th) and Congo (89th), with rank increases of 44 and 40 places, respectively, between 2013 and 2024.

• For the first time, the report gives separate rankings by age group, in many cases varying widely from the overall rankings. 

• Lithuania tops the list for children and young people under 30, while Denmark is the world’s happiest nation for those 60 and older.

• In comparing generations, those born before 1965 are, on average, happier than those born since 1980. 

• Among millennials, evaluation of one’s own life drops with each year of age, while among boomers life satisfaction increases with age.