World Happiness Report

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. The rankings are based on a single life evaluation question, the Cantril Ladder, in which respondents rate their current lives on a scale from 0 to 10. As of March 2026, Finland has been ranked the happiest country in the world for nine years in a row.

History

In July 2011, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 65/309, also named as 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 Jigme 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.

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Methods and philosophy

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.

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 are not yet available across all countries. The reports' variables only show correlation, not causation (see Correlation does not imply causation).

The report measures subjective well-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.

The report shows how experts use well-being ratings to assess national progress. The experts are from fields including economics, psychology, survey analysis, and national statistics. Each report is organized by chapters that focus on issues relating to happiness. This includes 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.

WELLBYs

From 2021, the World Happiness Report has supported using WELLBYs (Well-Being-Adjusted Life-Years). It says that QALYs (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.

International rankings

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:

life evaluation – subjective rating of overall happiness, rated by each person surveyed on a scale of 0–10. This is the only number considered in each individual country's overall ranking
real GDP per capita
social support
healthy life expectancy
freedom to make life choices
generosity
perceptions of corruption

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.

2026 report

The 2026 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2023–2025.

2025 report

The 2025 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2022–2024.

2024 report

The 2024 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2021–2023.

2023 report

The 2023 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2020–2022.

2022 report

The 2022 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2019–2021.

2020 report

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.

2019 report

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.

2018 report

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.

2017 report

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.

2016 report

The 2016 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2013–2015.

2013 report

The 2013 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2010–2012.

Happiness of the young and old

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.

Annual report topics

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.

Criticism

Metrics

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.

Methodology

The World Happiness Report's use of a single-item indicator of subjective well-being is 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.