Ranked: happiest countries in the world 2024

Finland is the happiest country in the world for the seventh consecutive year. We take a look at the latest World Happiness Report

Happiness is a nebulous thing; hard to grasp and harder to hold onto. Scientists, economists and philosophers have defined it through the ages as a combination of different things, among them health, wealth, companionship and security.

Ever since 2011, when the United Nations (UN) adopted a resolution sponsored by Bhutan, entitled ‘Happiness: towards a holistic approach to development’, governments have worked to give more weight to happiness and well-being when determining how to achieve and measure social and economic development.

As such, various indices attempt to rank the happiest countries in the world annually. Now in its 11th year, the World Happiness Report from the UN’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) is particularly interesting as it ranks 143 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be.

The SDSN employs an international group of economists, neuroscientists and statisticians to survey citizens on their subjective well-being to produce a comprehensive annual list of the happiest countries in the world.

Assessing happiness

SDSN highlights that its rankings are not an index like the longer-running Human Development Index (HDI) and the more recent Happy Planet Index (HPI). Private sponsors often influence these and only partly draw on self-assessment – or make no use of it at all.

“The broad country coverage and annual surveys of the Gallup World Poll provide an unmatched source of data about the quality of lives all over the globe. There are now enough years of data, going back to 2006, to enable us this year to plausibly separate age and generational patterns for happiness.”

Prof John F Helliwell, World Happiness Report

SDSN emphasises that its findings draw heavily on data from population samples in each country, using a life evaluation survey to produce subjective well-being data. The report draws on interviews with over 100,000 people across 143 countries.

The report principally relies on asking a straightforward, subjective question of more than 1,000 people in each country:

"Imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top.

The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?"

World Happiness Report

That is not to say the report is without a scientific basis. Economic and social factors are considered along with the survey (namely GDP per capita, social support, life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity and perceptions of corruption), but the focus is on how happy citizens say they are; not how happy statisticians think they should be.

10 happiest countries

Once again, Finland has been named the happiest country in the world. Rounding out the rest of the top 10 are largely the same countries as last year, just shuffled around slightly.

1. Finland
2. Denmark
3. Iceland
4. Sweden
5. Israel
6. Netherlands
7. Norway
8. Luxembourg
9. Switzerland
10. Australia

10 unhappiest countries

At the other end of the table, war-scarred Afghanistan remains last as its humanitarian crisis continues to deepen after the Taliban returned to power in 2021.

1. Afghanistan
2. Lebanon
3. Lesotho
4. Sierra Leone
5. DR Congo
6. Zimbabwe
7. Botswana
8. Malawi
9. Eswatini (Swaziland)
10. Zambia

The geography of happiness

Unsurprisingly, there is a strong correlation between unhappiness and the world's poorest and most dangerous countries. Eight of the 10 unhappiest nations are in Africa with the other two, Afghanistan and Lebanon, respectively facing political and financial instability.

Eight of the 10 happiest countries are European nations with only Israel and Australia from outside Europe. Costa Rica, in 12th, is the highest-ranked country in the Americas. Australia has moved into 10th place and ahead of New Zealand (11). The UK has dropped one place to 20th.

Significantly, the USA (23) has fallen out of the top 20 for the first time since the report was first published in 2012, driven by a large drop in the well-being of Americans under 30. Afghanistan remains bottom of the overall rankings as the world’s unhappiest country.

The happiest country in Asia is Singapore (30) followed by Taiwan (31). Uruguay (26) is the happiest country in South America and Mauritius (70) is the happiest country in Africa.

Serbia (37) and Bulgaria (81) have had the biggest increases in average life evaluation scores since they were first measured by the poll in 2013, and this is reflected in climbs up the rankings between World Happiness Report 2013 and this 2024 edition of 69 places for Serbia and 63 places for Bulgaria.

The next two countries with the largest improvements are Latvia (46) and Congo (89), with rank increases of 44 and 40 places, respectively, between 2013 and 2024.

Happiest countries in the world 2024 – complete rankings

The World Happiness Report compiles data from the previous three years of available surveys. The overall happiness scores are calculated from the average of the six factors mentioned above.

Rank	Country	Score
1	Finland	7.741
2	Denmark	7.583
3	Iceland	7.525
4	Sweden	7.344
5	Israel	7.341
6	Netherlands	7.319
7	Norway	7.302
8	Luxembourg	7.122
9	Switzerland	7.060
10	Australia	7.057
11	New Zealand	7.029
12	Costa Rica	6.955
13	Kuwait	6.951
14	Austria	6.905
15	Canada	6.900
16	Belgium	6.894
17	Ireland	6.838
18	Czechia	6.822
19	Lithuania	6.818
20	UK	6.749
21	Slovenia	6.743
22	UAE	6.733
23	USA	6.725
24	Germany	6.719
25	Mexico	6.678
26	Uruguay	6.611
27	France	6.609
28	Saudi Arabia	6.594
29	Kosovo	6.561
30	Singapore	6.523
31	Taiwan	6.503
32	Romania	6.491
33	El Salvador	6.469
34	Estonia	6.448
35	Poland	6.442
36	Spain	6.421
37	Serbia	6.411
38	Chile	6.360
39	Panama	6.358
40	Malta	6.346
41	Italy	6.324
42	Guatemala	6.287
43	Nicaragua	6.284
44	Brazil	6.272
45	Slovakia	6.257
46	Latvia	6.234
47	Uzbekistan	6.195
48	Argentina	6.188
49	Kazakhstan	6.188
50	Cyprus	6.068
51	Japan	6.060
52	South Korea	6.058
53	Philippines	6.048
54	Vietnam	6.043
55	Portugal	6.030
56	Hungary	6.017
57	Paraguay	5.977
58	Thailand	5.976
59	Malaysia	5.975
60	China	5.973
61	Honduras	5.968
62	Bahrain	5.959
63	Croatia	5.942
64	Greece	5.934
65	Bosnia & Herz	5.877
66	Libya	5.866
67	Jamaica	5.842
68	Peru	5.841
69	Dominican Rep	5.823
70	Mauritius	5.816
71	Moldova	5.816
72	Russia	5.785
73	Bolivia	5.784
74	Ecuador	5.725
75	Kyrgyzstan	5.714
76	Montenegro	5.707
77	Mongolia	5.696
78	Colombia	5.695
79	Venezuela	5.607
80	Indonesia	5.568
81	Bulgaria	5.463
82	Armenia	5.455
83	South Africa	5.422
84	North Macedonia	5.369
85	Algeria	5.364
86	Hong Kong	5.316
87	Albania	5.304
88	Tajikistan	5.281
89	Congo	5.221
90	Mozambique	5.216
91	Georgia	5.185
92	Iraq	5.166
93	Nepal	5.158
94	Laos	5.139
95	Gabon	5.106
96	Ivory Coast	5.080
97	Guinea	5.023
98	Türkiye	4.975
99	Senegal	4.969
100	Iran	4.923
101	Azerbaijan	4.893
102	Nigeria	4.881
103	Palestine	4.879
104	Cameroon	4.874
105	Ukraine	4.873
106	Namibia	4.832
107	Morocco	4.795
108	Pakistan	4.657
109	Niger	4.556
110	Burkina Faso	4.548
111	Mauritania	4.505
112	Gambia	4.485
113	Chad	4.471
114	Kenya	4.470
115	Tunisia	4.422
116	Benin	4.377
117	Uganda	4.372
118	Myanmar	4.354
119	Cambodia	4.341
120	Ghana	4.289
121	Liberia	4.269
122	Mali	4.232
123	Madagascar	4.228
124	Togo	4.214
125	Jordan	4.186
126	India	4.054
127	Egypt	3.977
128	Sri Lanka	3.898
129	Bangladesh	3.886
130	Ethiopia	3.861
131	Tanzania	3.781
132	Comoros	3.566
133	Yemen	3.561
134	Zambia	3.502
135	Eswatini	3.502
136	Malawi	3.421
137	Botswana	3.383
138	Zimbabwe	3.341
139	DR Congo	3.295
140	Sierra Leone	3.245
141	Lesotho	3.186
142	Lebanon	2.707
143	Afghanistan	1.721

Top 10 happiest cities

In 2020, the report also ranked individual cities by residents’ perception of their well-being. Unsurprisingly, Finland’s capital Helsinki was in first position.

1. Helsinki, Finland
2. Aarhus, Denmark
3. Wellington, New Zealand
4. Zurich, Switzerland
5. Copenhagen, Denmark
6. Bergen, Norway
7. Oslo, Norway
8. Tel Aviv, Israel
9. Stockholm, Sweden
10. Brisbane, Australia

• View the complete 2020 city rankings here.

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Lead image: Kurtliu/Dreamstime