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TheWorld Happiness Report is a publication that contains articles and rankings ofnational happiness, based on respondent ratings of their own lives,[1] which the report also correlates with various(quality of) life factors.[2]
Since 2024, the report has been published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at theUniversity of Oxford, in partnership withGallup, theUNSustainable Development Solutions Network, and an independent editorial board.[3] The editorial board consists of the three founding editors,John F. Helliwell,Richard Layard, andJeffrey D. Sachs, along withJan-Emmanuel De Neve,Lara Aknin, and Shun Wang.[4]
The report primarily uses data from theGallup World Poll. As of March 2025,Finland has been ranked the happiest country in the world for eight years in a row.[5]
In July 2011, theUnited Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 65/309, also named asHappiness: Towards a Holistic Definition of Development,[6] 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 UNHigh Level Meeting: Well-being and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm,[7] drawing international attention.[8] On 2 April 2012, this was followed by the first UN High Level Meeting calledWellbeing and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm,[9] which was chaired byUN Secretary GeneralBan Ki-moon, in addition to thatprime ministerJigme Thinley ofBhutan, a nation that adopted gross national happiness instead ofgross domestic product as their main development indicator.[10]
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.[11]
The rankings of national happiness are based on a happiness measurement survey undertaken world-wide by thepolling companyGallup, 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.[12] The report correlates the life evaluation results with various life factors.[2]
Researchers use the reports' life factor variables to explain national-level differences in life evaluation. However, some variables, such as unemployment or inequality, are not considered. That is because comparable data is not yet available across all countries. The reports' variables only show correlation, not causation (seeCorrelation does not imply causation).[12]
The report measures subjectivewell-being using the "Cantril ladder" to reflect people’s own views, rather than external judgments. The goal is to free respondents to evaluate their own well-being.[13][14]
The report shows how experts use well-being ratings to assess national progress. The experts are from fields includingeconomics,psychology,survey analysis, andnational statistics. Each report is organized by chapters that focus on issues relating tohappiness. This includes mental illness, the objective benefits of happiness, the importance of ethics, policy implications, and links with theOrganization for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) approach to measuringsubjective well-being and other international and national efforts.
From 2021, the World Happiness Report has supported using WELLBYs (Well-Being-Adjusted Life-Years). It says thatQALYs (Quality-Adjusted Life Years) only count a patient's health quality. Instead, WELLBYs should be used. The report says policy-makers should aim to increase the WELLBYs of people alive today and future generations.[15][16][17]
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,[18] as well as other sources such as theWorld Values Survey, in some of the reports. The Gallup World Poll questionnaire[19] 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.
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The 2025 World Happiness Report focused on the theme of “Caring and Sharing” and its impact on global well-being. It highlighted the positive correlation between caring behaviours and happiness, emphasizing the importance of social connections and also community life.[20] |
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The 2024 World Happiness Report focused on happiness at different stages of life. Chapter 3 presents global data on child and adolescent wellbeing, whereas Chapters 4 and 5 focus on older age, covering the links between wellbeing and dementia and a deep dive into the well being of older people in India.[21] |
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The 2023 World Happiness Report was a triannual analysis of 2020–2022, heavily influenced by COVID-19 and other significant challenges.[22] For the sixth consecutive year, Finland was ranked on top, followed by Denmark, Iceland, Israel and the Netherlands. In the top-10 rankings, Israel jumped five places, while Switzerland fell four places. Lithuania was the only new country in the top-20.[23] |
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The 2022 World Happiness Report included a section looking at possible genetic effects on individual happiness.[24] Finland is in the top position in the world happiness report in 2022. Followed byDenmark andIceland in second and third place.Switzerland,Netherlands,Luxembourg,Sweden,Norway,Israel andNew Zealand, were among the top 10 'happiest' countries in the worldHappiness, Benevolence, and Trust During COVID-19 and Beyond. Among 146 countries ranked by the report,Afghanistan scores the lowest point of 2.523 and was ranked as the least 'happy' country in the world in 2022. |
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The 2021 World Happiness Report, released on March 20, 2021, ranks 156 countries based on an average of three years of surveys between 2017 and 2019. The 2020 report especially focuses on the environment – social, urban, and natural, and includes links between happiness and sustainable development.[25] Finland holds the rank of the happiest country in the world for the fourth consecutive year.[26] It is followed byDenmark,Switzerland,Iceland andNetherlands.Afghanistan received the lowest score, withSouth Sudan andRwanda just above it. In addition to country rankings, this is the second year that the World Happiness Report ranks cities. The happiest city in the world isHelsinki, the capital ofFinland. The report shows that the happiness ranking of cities is almost identical to that of the countries they are in. |
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The 2020 World Happiness Report, released on March 20, 2020, ranks 156 countries based on an average of three years of surveys between 2017 and 2019. The 2020 report especially focuses on the environment – social, urban, and natural, and includes links between happiness and sustainable development.[27] Finland holds the rank of the happiest country in the world for the third consecutive year.[28] It is followed byDenmark,Switzerland,Iceland andNorway.Afghanistan received the lowest score, withSouth Sudan andZimbabwe just above it.[29] In addition to country rankings, this is the first year that the World Happiness Report ranks cities. The happiest city in the world isHelsinki, the capital ofFinland. The report shows that the happiness ranking of cities is almost identical to that of the countries they are in. In 2020, the editorial team expanded andJan-Emmanuel De Neve became a co-editor, joiningJohn F. Helliwell,Richard Layard,Jeffrey D. Sachs, and the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre became a fourth research pillar for the report. Associate editors were Lara Aknin, Haifang Huang and Shun Wang, and Sharon Paculor was recognized as production editor. From 2020,Gallup became a full data partner. |
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The 2019 World Happiness Report focuses community. According to the 2019 Happiness Report,Finland is the happiest country in the world,[30] withDenmark,Norway,Iceland, andThe Netherlands holding the next top positions. The second chapter of the report, 'Changing World Happiness', measures year-to-year changes in happiness across countries. For this, changes are reported from 2005-2008 to 2016-2018. Of the 132 countries with data for 2005-2008 and 2016-2018, 106 had significant changes: 64 were significant increases and 42 were significant decreases. Benin was the top gainer, while Venezuela showed the greatest decrease. The chapter also considers how happiness has been affected by changes in the quality of government. The third chapter considers happiness and voting behaviour, with data suggesting that happier people are more likely to vote, and to vote for incumbents. The fourth chapter is an examination of happiness and pro-social behaviour, finding that people are more likely to derive happiness from helping others when they feel free to choose whether or how to help, when they feel connected to the people they are helping, and when they can see how their help is making a difference. The final topic of the report, digital and information technologies and happiness, is covered in the remaining chapters. The editorial team for the 2019 report was expanded to include Lara Aknin as associate editor. |
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The 2018 iteration was released on 20 March and focused on the relation between happiness and migration. |
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The fifth World Happiness Report emphasizes the importance of the social foundations of happiness, which are analysed by comparing the life experiences between the top and bottom ten countries in the year’s happiness rankings.Norway topped the global happiness rankings in this report, jumping from fourth place in 2016 to first in 2017. It was followed byDenmark,Iceland andSwitzerland. The second chapter of the report focuses on the global rankings and calculates that bringing the social foundations from the lowest levels up to world average levels in 2014-2016 would increase life evaluations by almost two points. This means that social foundations effects are together larger than those of GDP per capita and healthy life expectancy. The third chapter focuses on economic growth and wellbeing in China, and shows that unemployment and changes in the social safety nets explain both the post-1990 fall in happiness levels and the subsequent recovery since 2005. The fourth chapter discusses the reasons why countries in Africa are generally lagging behind others in life evaluations. The fifth chapter analyses key determinants of happiness, including income, mental health, and physical health. The sixth chapter considers the determinant of employment and work in particular, emphasising the importance of employment for happiness across the world. The final chapter uses happiness history over the past ten years, analysing the case of the United States through the lens of social foundations of happiness. |
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The 2016 World Happiness Report -Rome Addition was issued in two parts as an update. Part one had four chapters: (1)Setting the Stage, (2)The Distribution of World Happiness, (3)Promoting Secular Ethics, and (4)Happiness and Sustainable Development: Concepts and Evidence. Part two has six chapters: (1)Inside the Life Satisfaction Blackbox, (2)Human Flourishing, the Common Good, and Catholic Social Teaching, (3)The Challenges of Public Happiness: An Historical-Methodological Reconstruction, (4)The Geography of Parenthood and Well-Being: Do Children Make Us Happy, Where and Why?, and (5)Multidimensional Well-Being in Contemporary Europe: An Analysis of the Use of a Self-Organizing Map Applied to Share Data. Chapter 1,Setting the Stage is written by John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard, and Jeffrey Sachs. This chapter briefly surveys the happiness movement ("Increasingly, happiness is considered to be the proper measure of social progress and the goal of public policy.") gives an overview of the 2016 reports and synopsis of both parts of the 2016 Update Rome Addition. Chapter 2,The Distribution of World Happiness is written by John F. Helliwell, Hailing Huang, and Shun Wang. This chapter reports happiness levels of countries and proposes the use of inequalities of happiness among individuals as a better measure for inequality thanincome inequality, and that all people in a population fare better in terms of happiness when there is less inequality in happiness in their region. It includes data from theWorld Health Organization andWorld Development Indicators, as well asGallup World Poll. It debunks the notion that people rapidly adapt to changes in life circumstances and quickly return to an initial life satisfactionbaseline, finding instead that changes in life circumstances such asgovernment policies, major life events (unemployment, majordisability) andimmigration change people's baseline life satisfaction levels. This chapter also addresses the measure for affect (feelings), finding that positive affect (happiness, laughter, enjoyment) has much "large and highly significant impact" on life satisfaction than negative affect (worry, sadness, anger). The chapter also examines differences in happiness levels explained by the factors of (1) social support, (2) income, (3) healthy life, (4) trust in government and business, (5) perceived freedom to make life decisions and (6) generosity. Chapter 3,Promoting Secular Ethics is written by Richard Layard, This chapter argues for a revival of an ethical life and world, harkening to times whenreligious organizations were a dominant force. It calls on secular non-profit organizations to promote "ethical living in a way that provides inspiration, uplift, joy and mutual respect", and gives examples of implementation by a non-profit founded by Richard Layard,[31] the chapter author, Action for Happiness, which offers online information frompositive psychology andBuddhist teachings. Chapter 4,Happiness and Sustainable Development: Concepts and Evidence is written by Jeffrey Sachs. This chapter identifies ways thatsustainable development indicators (economic, social and environmental factors) can be used to explainvariations in happiness. It concludes with a report about an appeal to include subjective well-being indicators into theUN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Part Two2016 Special Rome Edition was edited by Jeffrey Sacks, Leonardo Becchetti and Anthony Arnett. Chapter 1,Inside the Life Satisfaction Blackbox is written by Leonardo Becchetti, Luisa Carrado,[32] and Paolo Sama. This chapter proposes usingquality of life measurements (a broader range of variables that life evaluation) in lieu of or in addition to overall life evaluations in future World Happiness Reports. Chapter 2,Human Flourishing, the Common Good, and Catholic Social Teaching is written by Anthony Annett. This chapter contains explanations for three theories: (1) It is human nature to broadly define happiness and understand the connection between happiness and thecommon good, (2) that the current understanding of individuality is stripped of ties to the common good, and (3) that there is a need to restore the common good as central value for society. The chapter also proposesCatholic school teachings as a model for restoring the common good as a dominant value. Chapter 3,The Challenges of Public Happiness: An Historical-Methodological Reconstruction is written by Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zemagni. This chapter contemplates Aristotelian concepts of happiness and virtue as they pertain to and support the findings in the World Happiness Reports regarding the impact of social support, trust in government, and equality of happiness. Chapter 4, TheGeography of Parenthood and Well-Being. Do Children Make Us Happy, Where and Why? is written by Luca Stanca.[33] This chapter examines other research findings that children do not add happiness to parents. Using data from theWorld Values Survey, it finds that, with the exception of widowed parents, having children has a negative effect on life satisfaction for parents in 2/3 of the 105 countries studied, with parents in richer countries suffering more. Once parents areold, life satisfaction increases. The chapter concludes that "existing evidence is not conclusive" and a statement that the causes for the low life satisfaction levels may be that for richer countries, having children is valued less, and in poorer countries, people suffer in financial and time costs when they have children. Chapter 5,Multidimensional Well-Being in Contemporary Europe: Analysis of the Use of Self-Organizing Map Allied to SHARE Data is written by Mario Lucchini, Luca Crivelli[34] and Sara della Bella. This chapter contains a study of well-being data from older European adults. It finds that this chapter's study results were consistent with the World Happiness Report 2016 update: positive affect (feelings) have a stronger impact on a person's satisfaction with life than do negative affect (feelings). |
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The 2015 World Happiness Report has eight chapters: (1)Setting the Stage, (2)The Geography of World Happiness, (3)How Does Subjective Well-being Vary Around the World by Gender and Age?, (4)How to Make Policy When Happiness is the Goal, (5)Neuroscience of Happiness, (6)Healthy Young Minds Transforming the Mental Health of Children, (7)Human Values, Civil Economy, and Subjective Well-being, and (8)Investing in Social Capital. Chapter 1,Setting the Stage is written by John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey Sachs. This chapter celebrates the success of the happiness movement ("Happiness is increasingly considered a proper means of social progress and public policy."), citing the OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being, a referendum in the EU requiring member nations to measure happiness, and the success of the World Happiness reports (with readership at about 1.5 million), and the adoption of happiness by the government of theUnited Arab Emirates, and other areas. It sets an aspiration of the inclusion of subjective well-being into the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (not fulfilled), and outlines the 2015 report. It also address the use of the term Happiness, identifying the cons (narrowness of the term, breath of the term, flakiness), and defining the use of the term for the reasons that the 2011 UN General Assembly Resolution 65/309 Happiness Towards A Holistic Approach to Development[35] and April 2012 UN High Level Meeting: Well-being and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm,[36] Bhutan's Gross National Happiness[37] philosophy, the term's "convening and attention attracting power", and the asset in a "double usage of happiness" as an emotional report and life evaluation. Chapter 2,The Geography of Happiness is written by John F. Helliwell, Hailing Huang and Shun Wang. This chapter reports the happiness of nations measured by life evaluations. It includes color coded maps and an analysis of six factors the account for the differences: (1) social support in terms of someone to count on in times of need, (2) GDP per capita (income), (3) life expectancy (in terms of healthy years), (4) sense of corruption in government and business (trust), (5) perceived freedom to make life decisions, and (6) generosity. The first three factors were found to have the biggest impact on a population's happiness. Crisis (natural disasters and economic crisis) the quality of governance, and social support were found to be the key drivers for changes in national happiness levels, with the happiness of nations undergoing a crisis in which people have a strong sense of social support falling less than nations where people do not have a strong sense of social support. Chapter 3,How Does Subjective Well-being Vary Around the Globe by Gender and Age? is written byNicole Fortin, John F. Helliwell and Shun Wang. This chapter uses data for 12 experiences: happiness (the emotion), smiling or laughing, enjoyment, feeling safe at night, feeling well rested, and feeling interested, as well as anger, worry, sadness, depression, stress and pain to examine differences by gender and age. Findings reported include that there is not a lot of difference in life evaluations between men and women across nations or within ages in a nation (women have slightly higher life evaluations than men: 0.09 on a ten-point scale). It reports that overall happiness falls into a U shape with age on the x axis and happiness on the y, with the low point being middle age (45-50) for most nations (in some happiness does not go up much in later life, so the shape is more of a downhill slide), and that the U shape holds for feeling well rested in all regions. It finds that men generally feel safer at night than women but, when comparing countries, people inLatin America have the lowest sense of safety at night, while people inEast Asia andWestern Europe have the highest sense of safety at night. It also finds that as women age their sense of happiness declines and stress increases but worry decreases, as all people age their laughter, enjoyment and finding something of interest also declines, that anger is felt everywhere almost equally by men and women, stress peaks in the Middle Ages, and women experience depression more than men. It finds that where older people are happier, there is a sense of social support, freedom to make life choices and generosity (and income does not factor in as heavily as these three factors). Chapter 4,How to Make Policy When Happiness is the Goal is written by Richard Layard andGus O'Donnell. This chapter advocates for a "new form of cost-benefit analysis" for government expenditures in which a "critical level of extra happiness" yielded by a project is established. It contemplates the prioritization of increasing happiness of the happy vs. reducing misery of the miserable, as well as the issues ofdiscount rate (weight) for the happiness of future generations. It includes a technical annex with equations for calculating the maximization for happiness inpublic expenditure,tax policy,regulations, the distribution of happiness and a discount rate. Chapter 5,Neuroscience of Happiness is written by Richard J. Dawson and Brianna S. Schuyler. This chapter reports on research inbrain science and happiness, identifying four aspects that account for happiness: (1) sustained positive emotion, (2) recovery of negative emotion (resilience), (3)empathy, altruism and pro-social behavior, and (4) mindfulness (mind-wandering/affective sickness). It concludes that thebrain's elasticity indicates that one can change one's sense of happiness and life satisfaction (separate but overlapping positive consequences) levels by experiencing and practicing mindfulness, kindness, and generosity; and calls for more research on these topics. Chapter 6,Healthy Young Minds: Transforming theMental Health of Children is written by Richard Layard and Ann Hagell.[38] This chapter identifies emotional development as of primary importance, (compared to academic and behavioral factors) in achild's development and determination of whether a child will be a happy and well-functioning adult. It then focuses on the issue ofmental illness in children, citing the statistic that while worldwide 10% of the world's children (approximately 200 million) suffer from diagnosable mental health problems, even in the richest nations, only one quarter of these children of them are in treatment. It identifies the action steps to treating children with mental health problems: local community-lead child well-being programs, training health care professions to identify mental health problems in children, parity of esteem for mental and physical problems and treatment, access toevidence-based mental health treatment for families and children, promotion of well-being in schools with well-beingcodes that inform theorganizational behavior of schools, training teachers to identify mental health in children, teachings of life skills, measuring of children's well-being by schools, development of free apps available internationally to treat mental illness in teens, and inclusion of mental health with the goal of physical health in the Sustainable Development goals. The chapter lists the benefits of treating children's mental health: improved educational performance, reduction inyouth crimes, improved earnings and employment in adulthood, and betterparenting of the next generation. Chapter 7,Human Values, Civil Economy and Subjective Well-being is written by Leonardo Bechhetti,[39] Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni. This chapter begins with a critique of the field of economics ("Economics today looks like physics before the discovery of electrons"), identifying reductionism in which humans are conceived of as 100% self-interested individuals (economic reductionism),profit maximization is prioritized over all other interests (corporate reductionism), and societal values are narrowly identified with GDP and ignore environmental,cultural,spiritual and relational aspects (value reductionism). The chapter them focuses on a theoretical approach termed "Civil Economy paradigm", and research about it demonstrating that going beyond reductionism leads to greater socialization for people and communities, and a rise in priority of the values of reciprocity, friendship, trustworthiness, and benevolence. It makes the argument that positive social relationships (trust, benevolence, sharedsocial identities) yield happiness and positive economic outcomes. It ends with recommendations for move from the dominant model of elite-competitive democracy to a participatory/deliberative model of democracy with bottom-up political and economic participation and incentives for non-selfish actions (altruistic people) and corporations with wider goals than pure profit (ethical and environmentallyresponsible corporations). Chapter 8,Investing in Social Capital is written by Jeffrey Sachs. This chapter focuses on "pro-sociality" ("individuals making decisions for the common good that may conflict with short-runegoistic incentives"). It identifies pro-social behaviors: honesty, benevolence, cooperation and trustworthiness. It recommends investment insocial capital through education, moral instruction, professionalcodes of conduct, public censure and condemnation of violators of public trust, and public policies to narrow income inequalities for countries where there is generalized distrust of government and business, pervasivecorruption and lawless behavior (such astax evasion). |
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The 2013 World Happiness Report has eight chapters: (1)Introduction, (2)World Happiness: Trends, Explanations and Distribution, (3)Mental Illness and Unhappiness, (4)The Objective Benefits of Subjective Well-being, (5)Restoring Virtue Ethics in the Quest for Happiness, (6)Using Well-being as a Guide to Policy, (7)The OECD Approach to Measuring Subjective Well-being, and (8)From Capabilities to Contentment: Testing the Links between Human Development and Life Satisfaction. Chapter 1,Introduction is written by John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey Sachs. It synopsizes the chapters and gives a discussion of the termhappiness. Chapter 2,World Happiness: Trends, Explanations andDistributions is written by John F. Helliwell and Shun Wang. It provides ratings among countries and regions for satisfaction with life using the Cantril Ladder, positive and negative affect (emotions), andlog of GDP per capita, years of healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on in times of trouble, perceptions ofcorruption, prevalence ofgenerosity, andfreedom to make life choices. Chapter 3,Mental Illness and Unhappiness is written by Richard Layard, Dan Chisholm, Vikram Patel, and Shekhar Saxel. It identifies the far ranging prevalence ofmental illness around the world (10% of the world's population at one time) and provides the evidence showing that "mental illness is a highly influential - and...the single biggest - determinant of misery". It concludes with examples of interventions implemented by countries around the world. Chapter 4,The Objective Benefits of Subjective Well-being is written by Jan-Emmanuel de Neve, Ed Diener, Louis Tay and Cody Xuereb. It provides an explanation of the benefits of subjective well-being (happiness) on health & longevity, income,productivity &organizational behavior, and individual & social behavior. It touches on the role of happiness inhuman evolution through rewarding behaviors that increase evolutionary success and beneficial to survival. Chapter 5,Restoring Virtue Ethics in the Quest for Happiness is written by Jeffrey Sachs. It argues that "a renewed focus on the role of ethics, and in particular of virtuous behavior, in happiness could lead us to new and effectivestrategies for raising individual, national and global well-being", looking to theeightfold noble path (the teachings of thedharma handed down in theBuddhist tradition that encompass wise view/understanding, wise intention, wise speech, wise action, wise livelihood, and effort, concentration and mindfulness),Aristotelian philosophy (people are social animals, "with individual happiness secured only within a political community...[which] should organize its institutions to promote virtuous behavior), and Christian doctrine ofSt. Thomas Aquinas ("placing happiness in the context of servicing God's will"). It gives an explanation of the evolution of the field of economics up t the "failures of hyper-commercialism" and suggests an antidote based on four global ethical values: (1) non-violence and respect for life, (2) justice and solidarity, (3) honesty and tolerance, and (4) mutual esteem and partnership. Chapter 6,Using Well-being as Guide to Public Policy is written byGus O'Donnell. This chapter gives a status report on the issues governments grapple with in adopting well-being and happiness measures and goals for policy, from understanding the data or establishing whether a specific policy improves well-being, to figuring out how to "incorporate well-being into standard policy making". It provides examples of efforts to measure happiness and well-being from Bhutan, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK, and cities and communities in the US, Canada, Australia and Tasmania. It identifies the key policy areas of health, transport and education for policy makers to focus on and includes discussions about interpersonal comparability (concentrating on "getting people out of misery" instead of making happy people happier), discount rate (do we invest more in happiness for people today or in the future?) and putting a monetary value on happiness for policy trade off decisions (e.g. If "a 10% reduction in noise increase SWB by one unit, then we can infer that a 10% reduction is "worth" $1,000" when $1,000 would increase a person's SWB by one unit). Chapter 7,The OECD Approach to Measuring Subjective Well-being is written by Martine Durand and Conal Smith. This chapter was written the same year the OECD issued its Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being,[40] and is a synopsis of such. It includes a definition for subjective well-being: life evaluation (a person's reflection on their life and life circumstances), affect (positive and negative emotions) andeudaimonia; core measures, a discussion ondata collection processes,survey and sample design, other aspects of using subjective well-being metrics, and ideas on how policy-makers can use subjective well-being data. It surveys the status of wealthy countries subjective well-being data collection process, and identifies future directions of experimentation and better income measures, citing theEasterlin Paradox as the basis for this call. Chapter 8,From Capabilities to Contentment: Testing the Links between Human Development and Life Satisfaction is written by Jon Hall.[41] This chapter explains the components of human development using objective metrics: (1) education, health and command over income and nutrition resources, (2) participation and freedom, (3) human security, (4) equity, and (5)sustainability; key findings of theHuman Development Index (HDI) ("weak relationship between economic growth and changes in health and education" as well as life expectancy), and examines the relationship between the HDI and happiness, finding that (1) components of the HDI "correlate strongly with better life evaluations", and (2) there is a strong relationship between life evaluation and the "non-income HDI". It contemplates measurement of conditions of life beyond the HDI that are important to well-being: (1) better working conditions, (2) security against crime and physical violence, (3) participation in economic and political activities, (4) freedom and (5) inequality. The concludes with the statements that the HDI and SWB have similar approaches and importantly connected, with the two disciplines offering alternative and complementary views of development. |
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The 2012 World Happiness Report was issued at the UN High Level Meeting Well-being and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm[42] by editorsJohn F. Helliwell,Richard Layard andJeffrey Sachs. Part one has an introduction (chapter 1) and three chapters: (2)the State of World Happiness, (3)Causes of Happiness and Misery, Some Policy Implications. Part two has three chapters, each a case study, of Bhutan, the United Kingdom Office of National Statistics, and theOECD. Chapter 1,The Introduction is by Jeffrey Sachs and referencesBuddha andAristotle, identifies today's era as theanthropocene, and identifies the reasonsGDP is not a sufficient measure to guide governments andsociety. Chapter 2,TheState of World Happiness, is written byJohn F. Helliwell and Shun Wang,[43] and contains a discussion ofsubjective well-being measures that ranges from the validity of subjective well-being measures to the seriousness of happiness, happiness set points and cultural comparisons, and it includes data from theGallup World Poll,European Social Survey, and the World Values Survey.[44] Chapter 3,The Causes of Happiness and Misery is written byRichard Layard, Andrew Clark,[45] and Claudia Senik,[46] and contemplates research on the impact on happiness of the external factors ofincome, work,community and governance,values andreligion, as well as the internal factors ofmental health,physical health, family experience,education, andgender and age. Chapter 4,SomePolicy Implications, written by John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey Sachs, calls for a greater understanding on how governments can measure happiness, the determinants of happiness, and use of happiness data and findings about determinants for policy purposes. It also highlights the role ofGDP ("GDP is important but not all that is important") as a guide to policy makers, the importance that policy makers should place on providing opportunities for employment; the role of happiness in policy making ("Making happiness an objective of governments would not therefore lead to the "servile society", and indeed quite the contrary...Happiness comes from an opportunity to mold one's own future, and thus depends on a robust level of freedom."); the role of values and religion ("In well-functioning societies there is widespread support for theuniversal value that we should treat others as we would like them to treat us. We need to cultivatesocial norms so that the rich and powerful are never given a feeling of impunity vis-à-vis the rest of society."); calls for wider access to psychological therapies in a section onmental health citing the fact that one third of all families are affected by mental illness; identifies improvements in physical health as "probably the single most important factor that has improved human happiness" and calls out therich-poor gap in health care between rich and poor countries; calls on workplace and governmental policies that encouragework–life balance and reduce stress, including family support andchild care; and states that "Universal access to education is widely judged to be a basichuman right..." The chapter concludes with aphilosophical discussion. Chapter 5,Case Study:Bhutan Gross National Happiness and the GNH Index is written by Karma Ura,[47] Sabine Alkire,[48] and Tsoki Zangmo. It gives a short history of the development of the Gross National Happiness (GNH) concept in Bhutan, and an explanation of the GNH index,data collection anddata analysis process, including the ratingmethodology to determine if an individual experiences happiness sufficiency levels, as well as the policy and lifestyle implications Chapter 6,Case Study: ONS Measuring Subjective Well-being: The UK Office of National Statistics Experience is written by Stephen Hicks. It covers the basis for the creation of the Measuring National Well-being Programme[49] in the UK's Office of National Statistics[50] (ONS), and the development of their methodology for measuring well-being. Chapter 5,Case Study OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being is an explanation about the process and rationale the OECD was undertaking to develop its Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being,[51] which it issued in 2013. |
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 calledDystopia. 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.[52]
The 2025 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2022–2024.[53]
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The 2024 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2021–2023.[54]
The 2023 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2020–2022.
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The 2022 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2019–2021.
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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 theGallup World Poll, based entirely on survey scores and answers to the main life evaluation question asked in the poll.
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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 andNetherlands hold the next top positions. The report was published on 20 March 2019 by UN. The full report can be read at2019 Report. The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness.
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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 andSwitzerland hold the next top positions. The report was published on 14 March 2018 by UN. The full report can be read at2018 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.
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The2017 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 theNordic 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.
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The 2016 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2013–2015.
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The 2013 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2010–2012.
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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.[62]
| This section mayrequirecleanup to meet Wikipedia'squality standards. The specific problem is:contains duplicates, e.g. "89. Congo 3.245" and "142. Congo 5.304", "93. Gabon 5.185" and "97. Gabon 5.106", and "96. Laos 4.832" and "108. Laos 5.139". Please helpimprove this section if you can.(October 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
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Critics have pointed out the difference between evaluations and experiences of well-being.[63][64] For instanceColombia came 37th in the 2018 World Happiness Report rankings but first by daily emotional experience inGallup's Positive Experience Index.[65] The inconsistencies in the results of different happiness measurement surveys have also been noted, for instance, aPew survey of 43 countries in 2014 (which excluded most of Europe) had Mexico, Israel, and Venezuela finishing first, second and third.[66] 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.[67]
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 theUnited Nations'Human Development Index, the OECDBetter Life Index of 2011, or theSocial Progress Index of 2013. There has also been an ongoing debate regarding single-item and multi-item scales as measures of life satisfaction.[68]
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.[69]
In 2014, British journalistMichael Booth questioned the legitimacy of theNordic countries' freedom and happiness rankings in his bookThe Almost Nearly Perfect People. In it, he criticizesDenmark'senvironmental footprint and notes that the taxes and personal debt levels among its citizens are the highest in the world.[70] He also writes that inFinland, the most common type of prescription medications in the country areantipsychotic. He also points out the country's high alcohol consumption, murder, and suicide rates.[71] Further, he argues that he doesn't think the Danes were the world's happiest people, but instead described them as the "most satisfied".[72]
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