World Happiness Report

The World Happiness Report is a publication that contains articles and rankings of national happiness, based on respondent ratings of their own lives, which the report also correlates with various (quality of) life factors.
Since 2024, the report has been published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, in partnership with Gallup, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and an independent editorial board. The editorial board consists of the three founding editors, John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard, and Jeffrey D. Sachs, along with Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Lara Aknin, and Shun Wang.
The report primarily uses data from the Gallup World Poll. As of March 2025, Finland has been ranked the happiest country in the world eight years in a row.
In July 2011, the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 65/309 Happiness: Towards a Holistic Definition of Development, inviting member countries to measure the happiness of their people and to use the data to help guide public policy.
The first World Happiness Report was released on 1 April 2012, as a foundational text for the UN High Level Meeting: Well-being and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm, drawing international attention. On 2 April 2012, this was followed by the first UN High Level Meeting called Wellbeing and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm, which was chaired by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, in addition to that Prime Minister Jigmi Thinley of Bhutan, a nation that adopted gross national happiness instead of gross domestic product as their main development indicator.
The first report outlined the state of world happiness, causes of happiness and misery, and policy implications highlighted by case studies. In 2013, the second World Happiness Report was issued, and in 2015 the third. Since 2016, it has been issued on an annual basis on 20 March, to coincide with the UN's International Day of Happiness.
The rankings of national happiness are based on a happiness measurement survey undertaken world-wide by the polling company Gallup, Inc. Nationally representative samples of respondents are asked 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. The report correlates the life evaluation results with various life factors.
The life factor variables used in the reports are reflective of determinants that explain national-level differences in life evaluations across research literature. However, certain variables, such as unemployment or inequality, are not considered because comparable data is not yet available across all countries. The variables used illustrate important correlations rather than causal estimates.
The use of subjective measurements of wellbeing is meant to be a bottom-up approach which emancipates respondents to evaluate their own wellbeing. In this context, the value of the "Cantril ladder" is the fact that a respondent can self-anchor themselves based on their perspective.
In the reports, experts in fields including economics, psychology, survey analysis, and national statistics, describe how measurements of well-being can be used effectively to assess the progress of nations, and other topics. Each report is organized by chapters that delve deeper into issues relating to happiness, including mental illness, the objective benefits of happiness, the importance of ethics, policy implications, and links with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) approach to measuring subjective well-being and other international and national efforts.
From 2021 the World Happiness Report has advocated for the use of WELLBYs (Well-Being-Adjusted Life-Years); it argues that QALYs only count the individual patient's health-related quality of life, and instead WELLBYs should be used. Policy-makers should aim to maximize the WELLBYs of all who are born, and also include the WELLBYs of future generations (subject to a small discount rate).
Country rankings for the young and the old are quite different, and systematically so, underscoring the fact that convergence between the two halves of Europe has been driven mainly by the rising happiness of the young. Countries ranking highest for the old are generally countries with high overall rankings, but include several where the young have recently fared very poorly.
The World Happiness Report has been published every year since 2012 (except for 2014).
In addition to ranking countries’ happiness and well-being levels, each report has contributing authors and most focus on a particular theme. The data used to rank countries in each report is drawn from the Gallup World Poll, as well as other sources such as the World Values Survey, in some of the reports. The Gallup World Poll questionnaire measures 14 areas within its core questions: (1) business & economic, (2) citizen engagement, (3) communications & technology, (4) diversity (social issues), (5) education & families, (6) emotions (well-being), (7) environment & energy, (8) food & shelter, (9) government and politics, (10) law & order (safety), (11) health, (12) religion & ethics, (13) transportation, and (14) work.
Data is collected from people in over 150 countries. Each variable measured reveals a populated-weighted average score on a scale running from 0 to 10 that is tracked over time and compared against other countries. These variables currently include:
Each country is also compared against a hypothetical nation called Dystopia. Dystopia represents the lowest national averages for each key variable and is, along with residual error, used as a regression benchmark. The six metrics are used to explain the estimated extent to which each of these factors contribute to increasing life satisfaction when compared to the hypothetical nation of Dystopia, but they themselves do not have an effect on the total score reported for each country.
The 2025 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2022–2024.
The 2024 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2021–2023.
The 2023 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2020–2022.
The 2022 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2019–2021.
The 2020 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2017–2019. Finland is the 'happiest' country in the world, followed by Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, and Norway. The data comes from the Gallup World Poll, based entirely on survey scores and answers to the main life evaluation question asked in the poll.
The 2019 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2016–2018. As per the 2019 Happiness Index, Finland is the 'happiest' country in the world. Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Netherlands hold the next top positions. The report was published on 20 March 2019 by UN. The full report can be read at 2019 Report. The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness.
The 2018 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2015–2017. As per the 2018 Happiness Index, Finland is the 'happiest' country in the world. Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland hold the next top positions. The report was published on 14 March 2018 by UN. The full report can be read at 2018 Report. The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness. The World Happiness Report 2018, which ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels, and 117 countries by the happiness of their immigrants, was released on March 14 at a launch event at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican.
The 2017 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2014–2016. For that timespan, Norway was the overall 'happiest' country in the world, even though oil prices had dropped. Close behind were Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland in a tight pack. Four of the top five countries follow the Nordic model. All the top ten countries had high scores in the six categories. The ranked follow-on countries in the top ten are: Finland, the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Sweden.
The 2016 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2013–2015.
The 2013 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2010–2012.
Critics have pointed out the difference between evaluations and experiences of well-being. For instance Colombia came 37th in the 2018 World Happiness Report rankings but first by daily emotional experience in Gallup's Positive Experience Index. The inconsistencies in the results of different happiness measurement surveys have also been noted, for instance, a Pew survey of 43 countries in 2014 (which excluded most of Europe) had Mexico, Israel, and Venezuela finishing first, second and third. Others point out that the variables of interest used by the World Happiness Report are more appropriate for measuring national-level rather than individual-level happiness.
The World Happiness Report's use of a single-item indicator of subjective well-being is fundamentally different from more traditional Index approaches which use a range of indicators such as the United Nations' Human Development Index, the OECD Better Life Index of 2011, or the Social Progress Index of 2013. There has also been an ongoing debate regarding single-item and multi-item scales as measures of life satisfaction.
The idea that subjective well-being can be captured by a survey has also been contested by economists, who have identified that people’s assessments of their happiness can be affected by how, for example, their country’s education system grades exams, and that survey questions on subjective well-being are affected by response styles.
In 2014, British journalist Michael Booth questioned the legitimacy of the Nordic countries' freedom and happiness rankings in his book The Almost Nearly Perfect People. In it, he criticizes Denmark's environmental footprint and notes that the taxes and personal debt levels among its citizens are the highest in the world. He also writes that in Finland, the most common type of prescription medications in the country are antipsychotic. He also points out the country's high alcohol consumption, murder, and suicide rates. Further, he argues that he doesn't think the Danes were the world's happiest people, but instead described them as the "most satisfied".