Finland ranks again the world’s top country for the 7th time in a row in the happiness report 2024. Last six years Finland crowned consecutively the number one country in the World Happiness Report.
The top 10 countries have remained much the same since before COVID. Finland is still top, with Denmark now very close, and all five Nordic countries in the top 10. But in the next 10, there is more change, with the transition countries of Eastern Europe rising in happiness (especially Czechia, Lithuania and Slovenia). Partly for this reason the United States and Germany have fallen to 23 and 24 in the rankings.
World Happiness Report 2024
In this issue of the World Happiness Report focus on the happiness of people at different stages of life. In the seven ages of man in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, the later stages of life are portrayed as deeply depressing. But happiness research shows a more nuanced picture, and one that is changing over time.
In the West, the received wisdom was that the young are the happiest and that happiness thereafter declines until middle age, followed by substantial recovery. But since 2006-10, as we shall see, happiness among the young (aged 15-24) has fallen sharply in North America – to a point where the young are less happy than the old. Youth happiness has also fallen (but less sharply) in Western Europe.
By contrast, happiness at every age has risen sharply in Central and Eastern Europe, so that young people are now equally happy in both parts of Europe. In the former Soviet Union and East Asia too there have been large increases in happiness at every age, while in South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa happiness has fallen at every age.
It is of course an issue to what extent these changes reflect generational changes that can be expected to persist as each generation gets older. In pioneering work, Chapter 2 disentangles the effect of which cohort you are in from that of age. At the global level, it reveals a lower level of happiness among people born since 1980.
One thing is the average level of happiness, another is its dispersion. Since 2006-10, the inequality of happiness has increased in every region except Europe – another worrying trend.
World’s Top 10 Happiest Countries
The top 10 have remained fairly stable, with Finland still in first position, although now followed more closely by Denmark. All of the top 10 countries, except for Australia and the Netherlands, have populations less than 15 million, while in the top twenty, only Canada and the United Kingdom have populations over 30 million.
Top 20 World Happiest Countries
The biggest change this year is within the top 20. There are two new entrants, Costa Rica and Kuwait at 12 and 13. Coupled with the continuing convergence between the two halves of Europe, with Czechia, Lithuania and Slovenia at positions 18, 19 and 21, have contributed to the fall of the United States and Germany from 15 and 16 last year to 23 and 24 this year.
