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World Happiness Report
The latest findings, published today to mark the UN’s International Day of Happiness, rank the world’s happiest countries while also providing valuable interdisciplinary insights into the wellbeing and happiness of people across the globe.
The country rankings are based on a three-year average of each population’s average assessment of their quality of life. Experts from economics, psychology, sociology and beyond then analyse and 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 2025 country happiness rankings reveal:
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Finland leads the world in happiness for the eighth year in a row, with Finns reporting an average score of 7.736 (out of 10) when asked to evaluate their lives.
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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.
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The United States (24th) falls to its lowest-ever position
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The United Kingdom (23rd) reporting its lowest average life evaluation since the 2017 report.
Read the full story on the University of Oxford website.