What makes these countries the happiest in the world?

When it comes to happiness, Nordic countries are clearly doing a lot of things right. For the eighth year in a row, Finland is the world’s happiest country, according to the World Happiness Report 2025 published on March 20.While Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden took the top four spots, Norway is ranked No. 7.The report draws on Gallup World Poll data from people in more than 140 countries. Countries are ranked on happiness based on their average life evaluations over the three preceding years, in this case 2022 to 2024. The study was published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, and compiled in partnership with Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.The survey asks each participant to score their life as a whole and rankings are based on those life evaluations. The report then looks at six key variables to help explain life evaluations: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity and perceptions of corruption.“Nordic countries like Finland continue to benefit from universally available and high-quality health, education and social support systems. Inequality of well-being is also low,” said Ilana Ron-Levey, managing director at Gallup. medium119260997Why social connections and trust matterResearchers 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.Nordic nations rank among the top places for expected and actual return of lost wallets, the study found.Overall, researchers said global evidence on the perceived and actual return of lost wallets shows that people are much too pessimistic about the kindness of their communities compared to reality — actual rates of wallet return are around twice as high as people expect.The secret behind Finland’s happiness“It seems that Finnish people are relatively satisfied with their lives,” said Frank Martela, an assistant professor who specialises in well-being and happiness research at Aalto University.It could largely be explained by Finns living in “quite a well-functioning society”, he said.“Democracy is functioning well, we have free elections, free speech, low levels of corruption and all of these have shown to predict higher levels of national well-being,” Martela said.He added that the Nordic countries also all have relatively strong welfare systems — with parental leave, unemployment benefits and mostly universal healthcare — which also contribute to higher levels of well-being on average.Eveliina Ylitolonen, a 23-year-old student in Helsinki, said she believed that Finns’ focus on enjoying beautiful nature could help explain the consistently high level of happiness in the Nordic country, known for its deep forests and over 160,000 lakes. “Nature is an important part of this happiness,” she said.Jamie Sarja-Lambert, a professional video gamer who moved to Finland from the UK, agreed. “Seems like everyone is a lot more in touch with nature, going outside and socialising, more of a community,” he said.This year, the authors of the happiness report said new evidence indicates that engaging in acts of generosity and believing in the kindness of others are “significant predictors of happiness, even more so than earning a higher salary”.They also noted that in general “people are too pessimistic about the kindness of their communities”, and that “the return rate of lost wallets is much higher than people expect”. medium nocaptionhttp://youtu.be/gBuAluQQB50?si=SdUiU-SD9O5k8QNIWhat did the report say about South Asia?India is ranked 118th in this year’s index, up from the 126th spot in the previous year but below countries such as Nepal, Pakistan, Ukraine and Palestine.While India ranked 118th overall, in terms of the ‘country rankings for six measures of benevolence’, it was listed much higher at 57 for (how people) donated; at 10 for how people volunteered; 74 for helping a stranger, and in case of wallet returned by a neighbour (115), stranger (86) and police (93).In South Asia, while Nepal with 92nd rank (93 in 2024) and Pakistan, with 109th rank (108 in 2024) remained much ahead of India, Sri Lanka, with 133rd rank (128 in 2024) and Bangladesh 134th position (129 in 2024) lagged behind.China was ranked in 68th position this year, down from the 60th last year.According to the World Happiness Report, the annual report and much of the growing interest in happiness research “exists thanks to Bhutan”, which had sponsored a UN resolution for considering happiness for a holistic approach to development.Bhutan’s resolution was adopted by the UN General Assembly on July 19, 2011 and the first World Happiness Report was brought out in 2012. After the UN General Assembly adopted and declared March 20 as the International Day of Happiness, the World Happiness Report is released around that day each year.However, Bhutan, which focuses on Gross National Happiness, does not feature in the ranking of the 147 countries in this year’s World Happiness Report. medium119260971What dining says about an unhappy AmericaThe US fell to 24th place, its lowest rank since the report was first published in 2012, when it recorded its highest showing at No. 11.“The number of people dining alone in the US has increased 53% over the past two decades,” the authors said, noting that sharing meals “is strongly linked with well-being”.In 2023, roughly one in four Americans reported eating all their meals alone the previous day, the report said.“The increasing number of people who eat alone is one reason for declining well-being in the US,” it said.It also noted that the US was one of few countries to see a rise of so-called “deaths of despair” — from suicide or substance abuse — at a time when those deaths are declining in a majority of countries.The report surveyed people worldwide in 2022-24, before US President Donald Trump’s shakeup of national and global affairs since returning to the White House in January.With inputs from Rajesh Sharma, CNN and agenciesLead image: Pexels