What’s the happiest place on Earth? It’s not Disneyland, although there’s a Hans Christian Andersen vibe to the place. Gallup asked people in 130 countries to think of a ladder with the best possible life at 10 and the least at 1.
For the eighth year in a row, Finland topped the list at 7.7, followed by Denmark and Iceland at 7.5 and Sweden at 7.3.
According to Gallup, the top 10 happiest countries were unchanged from 2024. The Netherlands, Costa Rica, Norway, Israel, Luxembourg, and Mexico round out the top ten happiest nations.
The factors used to compile the report, published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, include several variables such as GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, and generosity.
For just the second time, the U.S. dropped out of the top 20, finishing 24th after finishing 23rd last year when we dropped from 15.
Why Finland? It’s significant that only the Netherlands and Mexico have populations of more than 15 million in the top 10.
“Finland is an extraordinary outlier and I think the world is really focused on understanding what is unique about Finland,” Ilana Ron Levey, managing director at Gallup says. She cites “a belief in others,” optimism for the future, trust in institutions, and support from friends and family as reasons why Finnish people are happier than most.
“I think another important point about Finland is that there is less well-being inequality within the country as compared to a country like the United States,” Ron Levey says. “In Finland, there’s more of a consensus about feeling good about your life.”
Ron Levey thinks something else that other countries can learn from Finland: the importance of benevolent acts.
“Good deeds also boost the happiness of the giver, and it’s not just about the recipient,” she says. Americans are the most generous nation on earth, giving more to charity per capita than any other country.
Beyond these rankings, the most recent report focuses on the effect that caring and sharing have on people’s happiness. Despite the rise in generosity during the COVID-19 pandemic, acts of kindness — helping a stranger, volunteering and donating — have lost their momentum. This matters to the world’s future wellbeing because individually, and taken together, these behaviors are all key drivers of happiness.
One of the report’s most striking revelations is that being kind and expecting kindness from others — believing that your wallet would be returned if you lost it — are stronger predictors of happiness than avoiding major negative events like crime or economic hardship. In other words, believing in the goodwill of those around us can have a bigger impact on our wellbeing than earning a higher salary.
The least happy nations are about who you’d expect. At the very bottom is the Islamic paradise of Afghanistan, with a ranking of 1.3 out of 10. That’s more than twice as nasty as Sierra Leone (2.9) and Lebanon (3.1).
I did a double-take when I saw Mexico at #10. But there’s logic to that ranking.
Researchers say that beyond health and wealth, some factors that influence happiness sound deceptively simple: sharing meals with others, having somebody to count on for social support, and household size. In Mexico and Europe, for example, a household size of four to five people predicts the highest levels of happiness, the study said.
Believing in the kindness of others is also much more closely tied to happiness than previously thought, according to the latest findings.
As an example, the report suggests that people who believe that others are willing to return their lost wallet is a strong predictor of the overall happiness of a population.
The short answer to how to be happy is to be part of a large family and do good deeds. I grew up in a family of 10 kids. My good deed for the day was writing this article.
No wonder I’m ecstatic.
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