Russia becomes happier, while USA drops to its lowest ever

A new World Happiness Report has been released, assessing happiness levels in nearly every country. Commissioned by the United Nations, the data is collected by Gallup, while analysis is conducted by the Wellbeing Research Centre at Oxford University. Russia's ranking improved slightly, although it still lags behind several post-Soviet nations. Meanwhile, China and the US also performed poorly: China ranked lower than Taiwan, while the US recorded its worst ranking in the history of the report.

Photo: commons.wikimedia.org by ID 4653867, https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/pdm/

Woman in a field

Scandinavia Still Leads the Rankings

The top 10 has remained largely unchanged from last year as Northern Europe continues to dominate. Finland holds the top spot for the eighth consecutive year, followed by Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and the Netherlands (the only Western European country ranking so high). Norway rounds out the top seven.

Beyond the Nordic nations, Mexico and Costa Rica have entered the top 10, ranking 10th and 6th, respectively. Remarkably, Israel has managed to stay in 8th place, despite facing ongoing conflict and terrorism. However, an important detail is that Palestinians were surveyed separately, and their ranking is much lower – Palestine placed 108th this year.

The happiest country in Asia is Taiwan, ranked 27th. Despite tensions with China, its residents are far more content than those on the mainland – China ranks 68th, 41 places lower. Hong Kong, formally part of China, comes in at 86th place.

The bottom of the list includes Sierra Leone, Lebanon, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Yemen, the Comoros, and Lesotho.

Afghanistan ranked last once again, with the report highlighting that women in the country rated their well-being significantly lower than men.

Lithuanians the Happiest in Post-Soviet Space

Russia ranked 66th overall. The breakdown of indicators shows that Russian respondents rated GDP per capita and social support highly but gave low scores for kindness among citizens and corruption levels.

The happiest post-Soviet countries are in the Baltics and Kazakhstan.

• Lithuania leads the region at 16th place.
• Estonia ranks 39th, Latvia 51st, and Kazakhstan 43rd.
• Uzbekistan surpassed Russia, ranking 53rd.
• The lowest-ranked former Soviet country is Ukraine, which placed 111th.

Lithuania has held the top post-Soviet spot for years. In 2024, Lithuanians under 30 were even ranked the happiest people on Earth. This surprised even the Lithuanians themselves-the country has one of the highest alcoholism rates in Europe. British magazine Dazed even sent a reporter to Lithuania to investigate, but young Lithuanians struggled to explain why they were so happy.

Wealthy Countries See Happiness Declining

Data shows that people in Western industrialized nations are less happy now than they were between 2005 and 2010. This decline is especially noticeable in the United States, which fell to 24th place-its lowest ranking ever. In 2012, the US was ranked 11th.

The five countries with the biggest increase in happiness are in Central and Eastern Europe:

• Serbia,
• Bulgaria,
• Georgia,
• Latvia,
• Romania.

This trend aligns with the Easterlin Paradox, first described by economist Richard Easterlin 50 years ago. He found that happiness is strongly tied to income at a specific point in time, both within and across countries. However, over time, rising incomes do not necessarily lead to greater happiness.

For example:

• Finland, the happiest country in the world, has a GDP per capita of about $53,000 (2023).
• The US, with a much higher GDP per capita of $83,000, ranks significantly lower.
• Costa Rica, with a GDP per capita of just $17,000, ranks among the happiest nations.

Kindness and Social Connections Matter More Than Money

The report identifies several factors that influence happiness more than wealth. One of the most critical is people's perception of kindness and their actual experience of goodwill from others. Social connections also play a huge role.

For example, people who live alone and rarely eat with others feel much less happy. However, happiness also declines when there are more than four people in a household.

To assess kindness, researchers surveyed people in different countries about how often they:

• Engage in charity work,
• Volunteer,
• Help strangers.

The most generous nations turned out to be relatively poor:

• Jamaica ranked first for helping strangers.
• Indonesia led in charitable giving and volunteering.
• Ukraine ranked third in charitable donations, far ahead of Russia.

Details

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 2024, Finland has been ranked the happiest country in the world seven times in a row.