Greece dropped 17 places in the World Happiness Report released on Thursday to mark the UN’s International Day of Happiness. Greece is 81st on the list, while Cyprus is in 67th place.
Experts use responses from people in more than 140 nations to rank the world’s ‘happiest’ countries. Finland tops the overall list for the eighth successive year with Finns reporting an average score of 7.736 (out of 10) when asked to evaluate their lives.
The report examines parameters such as GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity and perceptions of corruption. It was conducted by Gallup in collaboration with the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
Jon Clifton, CEO of Gallup, stressed that happiness is not only about wealth or development but also about trust, connection, and the sense that people feel safe. In addition, factors such as the presence of social support and the number of members in a family affect happiness.
For example, in Mexico and Europe, families with four to five people show higher levels of happiness. The United States fell to 24th place, its lowest ever, while the United Kingdom is in 23rd place, with its lowest average rating since 2017.
1. Finland
2. Denmark
3. Iceland
4. Sweden
5. Netherlands
6. Costa Rica
7. Norway
8. Israel
9. Luxembourg
10. Mexico
12. New Zealand
13. Switzerland
14. Belgium
15. Ireland
16. Lithuania
17. Austria
18. Canada
19. Slovenia
20. Czech Republic
Costa Rica (6th) and Mexico (10th) both enter the top 10 for the first time, while continued upward trends for countries such as Lithuania (16th), Slovenia (19th) and Czechia (20th) underline the convergence of happiness levels between Eastern, Central and Western Europe.
The United States (24th) falls to its lowest-ever position, with the United Kingdom (23rd) reporting its lowest average life evaluation since the 2017 report.
Country rankings are based on a three-year average of each population’s average assessment of their quality of life. Interdisciplinary experts from economics, psychology, sociology and beyond then seek to explain the variations across countries and over time using factors such as GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, a sense of freedom, generosity and perceptions of corruption.
These factors help to explain the differences across nations, while the rankings themselves are based solely on the answers people give when asked to rate their own lives.
The report says that in general, the western industrial countries are now less happy than they were between 2005 and 2010. Fifteen of them have had significant drops, compared to four with significant increases. Three Western countries had drops exceeding 0.5 on the 0–10 scale (the United States, Switzerland, and Canada) putting them among the fifteen largest losers.
Among the 136 countries included in the 2005–2010 and 2022–2024 data, there are 67 with statistically significant gains and 42 with significant drops in their life evaluations. Those with significant drops include Western industrialized countries with previously, and even currently, high rankings.
