The World Happiness Report 2025: How Did We Do?

Quick Answer: The United States ranked 24^th on the World Happiness Report. We were 16^th in 2023 and 34^th in 2024.

The Five Happiest Countries:

1. Finland
2. Denmark
3. Iceland
4. Sweden
5. Netherlands

What is The World Happiness Report?

Published by the World Health Organization (WHO) in collaboration with the University of Oxford, Gallup Polls, and the Wellbeing Research Centre, the annual World Happiness Report 2025 (WHR) collects data on 147 countries around the world on evidence-based metrics that measure levels of health, mental health, wellness, and wellbeing.

The goal of the research is to learn which country, on average, has the happiest citizens, based on information gathered from three types of surveys:

1. Life evaluations, such as the Gallup World Poll, measured
   • GDP per capita
   • Levels of social support
   • Life expectancy
   • Freedom of choice
   • Generosity
   • Perception of corruption
2. Positive emotions, measured as the average of the following feelings/behaviors the day before taking the survey:
   • Laughter
   • Enjoyment
   • Doing interesting things
3. Negative emotions, measured as the average of the following emotions the day before taking the survey:
   • Worry
   • Sadness
   • Anger

This year, the WHR focuses on two components of happiness: caring and sharing. What’s interesting about these components is that they’re outward-focused, yet when they’re present, they benefit both the subject of the outward focus and the individual focusing outward. Here’s how the authors of the report describe the role of these components in happiness:

“In this year’s issue, we focus on the impact of caring and sharing on people’s happiness. Like ‘mercy’ in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, caring is “twice-blessed” – it blesses those who give and those who receive. In this report, we investigate both of these effects: the benefits to the recipients of caring behavior and the benefits to those who care for others.”

This article will discuss the behaviors and circumstances that promote caring and sharing and lead to individual and collective happiness, and close with the final World Happiness Index 2025, i.e. a list of 147 countries, with the countries with the highest overall happiness scores – based on the three metrics we share above – landing at the top of the list, and those with the lowest happiness scores landing at the bottom.

First, we’ll review the connection between happiness and mental health and explore the relationship of positive mental health with overall happiness and wellbeing.

Happiness and Mental Health: What’s the Connection?

The peer-reviewed journal article Concept of Mental Health and Mental Well-Being, It’s Determinants And Coping Strategies published in 2024 examines the relationship between happiness and mental health. The authors establish helpful parameters for understanding the overall importance of positive mental health for an individual and share the factors that promote positive mental health and jeopardize positive mental health. Mental health experts call the former protective factors and the latter risk factors.

Let’s look at what research says about mental health, overall, in terms of basic human happiness and wellbeing:

• Mental health is essential for well-being and daily function.
• Positive mental health improves life across all levels of society, from the macro to the micro, and benefits nation, communities, families, and individuals.
• Mental health facilitates the smooth functioning of a society an improves productivity.
• Mental health affects everyone, in all areas of life: at play, at work, at school and at home.
• Positive mental health increases capital: economic, social, and human.
• Spirituality often contributes significantly to positive mental health, and positive mental health also has an impact on spirituality

The connection is clear: positive mental health is associated with happiness. With that said, we need to clarify something: a person with a mental health disorder can be a happy person. Whereas previous definitions of mental health defined mental health as an absence of mental illness, we can see a new, comprehensive understanding of mental health in the definition below, proposed in the 2015 article “Toward a New Definition of Mental Health”:

“Mental health is a dynamic state of internal equilibrium that enables individuals to use their abilities in harmony with the universal values of society. Basic cognitive and social skills; ability to recognize, express and modulate one’s own emotions, as well as empathize with others; flexibility and ability to cope with adverse life events and function in social roles; and harmonious relationship between body and mind represent important components of mental health which contribute, to varying degrees, to the state of internal equilibrium.”

When a person meets those criteria – regardless of diagnostic status – we can say they demonstrate mental health or positive mental health. As we can see, mental health relies more on our ability to manage our emotions than the nature of the emotions themselves and depends more on our ability to manage the events in our lives in an efficient and productive manner than our relative diagnostic status compared to others.

Next, let’s look at the factors that can protect or place mental health and wellbeing at risk.

Mental Health and Wellbeing: Protective Factors, Risk Factors

Evidence shows the presence of the following factors promotes and/or contributes to positive mental health:

• Individual factors: intelligence, being easygoing, resilience, positive interpersonal relationships, self-esteem
• Social factors: social capital, social support, community engagement
• Economic factors: income. employment
• Education: level of education, access to education
• Physical health: physical wellbeing, access to care
• Housing: quality and stability
• Family and relationships : positive family dynamics, support networks, supportive adults
• Life events: positive life events, presence of coping mechanisms
• Culture/identity: strong norms, a sense of belonging
• Environment: people-friendly urban design, plenty of green space
• Infrastructure: resources that promote social connection
• Lifestyle factors: healthy diet, plenty of exercise, absence of substance use, quality sleep
• Equity and inclusion: absence of stigma and discrimination

Evidence shows the presence of the following factors/events/circumstances promotes and /or contributes to negative mental health:

Perinatal:

• Poor maternal physical health
• Alcohol/substance use during pregnancy
• Unstable family dynamics

Early Childhood

• Physical/emotional neglect
• Physical/emotional abuse
• Sexual abuse
• Parental substance misuse
• Domestic violence

Late Childhood/Adolescence

• Ongoing neglect/abuse of any kind
• Ongoing domestic violence
• Low educational opportunity
• Individual substance misuse

Young Adult/Adult/Working Age

• Discrimination
• Low income
• Unemployment
• Violence
• Poor housing
• Low access to healthcare
• Substance misuse

Older Age

• Low income
• Poor health
• Isolation
• Stressful events, i.e. death of friends, loved ones

When considering the life of an individual – yours, of a friend or peer, or a family member – please understand that the presence of these factors is not wholly determinative: presence of those factors or circumstances increase likelihood of positive mental health or increase risk of negative mental health.

The World Happiness Report (WHR) 2025: What Promotes Sharing and Caring?

We’ve established a connection between positive mental health and happiness/wellbeing, and presented the various factors that either promote or impair – i.e. put at risk – positive mental health. Next, we’ll look at the factors – in addition to a foundation of positive mental health – that promote happiness.

Or, in the language of the WHR, we’ll answer the question:

What promotes sharing and caring?

According to the extensive research conducted by the authors of the WHR, the following six factors promote sharing and caring, which experts identify as essential components of happiness:

1. Having meals with other people:

• In some countries, most adults eat alone
• In others, adults almost always eat with others
• Countries where people often eat together score higher on the happiness scale
• Since 2003, the number of people in the U.S. who might eat all three meals a day alone has increased by over 50%

2. Living with family/living with children:

• Family units of 4-5 show higher levels of happiness than smaller or larger units
• Couples who live with at least one child score higher on happiness scales, compared to others
• Couples who live with extended family score higher on happiness scales, compared to others

3. Connecting with other people:

• Evidence in the happiness report shows a disconnect:
  • In general, young adults think other young adults are not as empathetic as the survey results
• Strong social connections, especially among young adults, are associated with higher scores on happiness scales

4. Supporting other people:

• Evidence shows behavior such as volunteering, making donations, and helping others can reduce the rate of deaths of despair, or deaths associated with isolation and loneliness
• Since 2000, rates of deaths of despair have decreased across the world, with two notable exceptions: The United States and The Republic of Korea

5. Trusting other people:

• Research connects a decrease in trust to a decrease in life satisfaction and happiness
• Research connects increasing levels of distrust in others and distrust of the system to a rise in populism
• Researchers connect increases in populism – connected to decreases in trust – to decreased levels of happiness

6. Giving to other people:

• The WHR focuses on quantifying the happiness increase for others connected to donating money to various charities.
• However, we’ll focus on this well-documented fact: helping others feels subjectively good, and is associated with higher scores on happiness and wellbeing scales, compared to the absence of helping others

What we learn from this report is that sharing and caring are associated with high levels of happiness, wellbeing, and life satisfaction, and the six actions/activities listed above increase the level of sharing and caring in the life of an individual.

We’re ready to share the highlights of the section of the report most people are eager to learn about: the big list of 147 countries on the Happiness Index, ranked in order from highest score to lowest score.

The World Happiness Ranking

To recap, the authors of the WHR ranked countries by their scores on three metrics:

1. Life Evaluations from the Gallup World Poll
2. Measures of Positive Emotions
3. Measures of Negative Emotions

We share the details of those metrics above, in our introduction. Remember: this is a list of countries, in order, where sharing and caring – two essential components of happiness – are highest. Ready?

Here’s the list.

The Twenty Happiest Countries in the World

1. Finland
2. Denmark
3. Iceland
4. Sweden
5. Netherlands
6. Costa Rica
7. Norway
8. Israel
9. Luxembourg
10. Mexico
11. Australia
12. New Zealand
13. Switzerland
14. Belgium
15. Ireland
16. Lithuania
17. Austria
18. Canada
19. Slovenia
20. Czcechia (former Czech Republic

As you can see, the United States scored outside the top twenty. We placed at #24: a drop of 8 places after placing 16^th in 2023 and a jump from placing 34^th in 2024.

So how do we get happier?

According to this report, we can find the answer in sharing and caring. We need more of both. To improve, we can use the template implied in the results: share more meals together, stay more connected to one another, trust one another more readily, and support one another more often.

We can achieve those goals, and we can start today. Pick your starting point, and watch what happens: can you increase your happiness by taking the simple advice to share and care more?

Evidence says yes, you can.