Global happiness ranking 2025 Finns remain the happiest - Switzerland slips further down the rankings

Finland tops the list, Switzerland loses several places, the USA is on the decline: the World Happiness Report shows how happy the countries of the world are. And what happiness actually means.

DPA

15.03.2025, 05:55

21.03.2025, 17:40

dpa

The people of Finland remain the happiest population in the world for the eighth year in a row. They have once again secured the top spot in the global happiness rankings ahead of their Nordic friends in Denmark, Iceland and Sweden, according to the latest World Happiness Report.

Back in the top 5 are the Netherlands in fifth place, while Costa Rica (6) and Mexico (10) both break into the top 10 for the first time. Switzerland remains the happiest German-speaking country, but slips further from 9th to 13th place - three years ago they were still in 4th place. Austria also loses ground, dropping three places from last year to 17th place, while Germany improves from 24th to 22nd place.

The World Happiness Report is published annually by an interdisciplinary team of researchers led by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford on World Happiness Day on March 20. Based on subjective assessments, it provides insights into the satisfaction and perceived quality of life of people around the world. Very different factors such as national economic performance, health, the feeling of freedom, people's generosity and the perception of corruption are included in the assessment. Trust within the community also plays an important role.

It's not just love that doubles when you share it

This time, the researchers take an explicit look at the impact that caring and sharing has on people's happiness. One of their findings: Trusting the kindness of others is much more strongly linked to happiness than previously thought - and people are much nicer to each other than you might think.

"Human happiness is driven by our relationships with others," says one of the authors of the report, social psychologist Lara B. Aknin from Canada's Simon Fraser University. Investing in positive social connections leads to greater satisfaction, as does acting benevolently. Or as Jon Clifton, head of the participating polling institute Gallup, puts it: "Happiness isn't just about wealth or growth - it's about trust, connection and the realization that others have your back." This year's report proves that people underestimate how friendly the world really is.

The German feeling of happiness

Now everyone defines the term happiness in their own way. Among other things, the researchers measure happiness by conducting an experiment on the question of how much people in the respective countries can rely on others to return their lost wallet. The northern countries are also top in this respect. At the same time, the goodwill of others in the experiment is generally assessed far too pessimistically worldwide.

Speaking of pessimism: in general, it is easy to get the feeling that the mood in Germany is bad at the moment. The happiness report does not confirm this perception: Germany has climbed two places year-on-year, and the average quality of life rating over three years on a scale of 0 to 10 has also improved slightly to 6.75.

Although many smaller EU countries such as Ireland, Belgium and Lithuania still leave Germany behind, it is ahead of the larger European nations of the UK (23rd place), Poland (26th), France (33rd), Spain (38th) and Italy (40th).

"None of the data for the years 2022 to 2024 can capture the current mood, which could well differ in complex ways," explains economist John F. Helliwell from the University of British Columbia, one of the founding fathers of the World Happiness Report. However, the German annual data for the past year is higher than that for 2022 and 2023 - a recent decline in happiness is therefore not apparent. In the wallet experiment, for example, Germans showed very high confidence levels - one of the possible reasons why they are doing well.

Trump's USA on the decline

This year, Germany also overtakes the USA, which is ranked 24th, its worst ranking ever. "The US, Canada and other countries in the English-speaking world are on a general downward trend, driven in particular by the fact that young people are becoming the least happy group," explains Helliwell.

This decline in happiness also has political consequences: Declining happiness and social trust in the US and parts of Europe are a major reason for increasing political polarization and votes against "the system", the report says. Helliwell sums it up as follows: "Dissatisfaction leads to polarization, and polarization leads to people no longer listening to each other and using other sources for facts and opinions, which in turn leads to further polarization."

Afghanistan remains at the bottom of the league

In general, happiness researchers have observed that the unequal distribution of happiness within countries has increased over the past 15 years - while it has remained fairly constant in an international comparison. It ranges from the happy Finns with a happiness score of just under 7.74 to the laggard Afghanistan, which comes in at 147th place with a score of just 1.36 - for women in the state led by the radical Islamic Taliban, it is even only 1.16. The unhappiest countries also include predominantly African states such as Sierra Leone, Malawi and Zimbabwe as well as Lebanon (145) and Yemen (140).