Ranked: The World’s 10 Happiest Countries (2019–2024)

Niccolo Conte
2025-03-26 08:11:00
www.visualcapitalist.com

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Ranked: The World’s Happiest Countries (2019–2024)

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While happiness may be intangible, it’s often influenced by real-world societal factors like personal freedom, financial security, safety, and trust in public institutions. As a result, the answer to whether people are ‘happy’ depends on several factors at both the individual and societal levels.

Each year, the World Happiness Report measures and ranks the world’s happiest countries, using data from the Gallup World Poll, which surveys over 100,000 people from 140 countries on a variety of issues, including life satisfaction, social support, and more.

This infographic highlights the world’s 10 happiest countries over the six years from 2019 to 2024 based on annual rankings from the World Happiness Report.

Please see the end of the article for more details on how the World Happiness Report scores happiness levels.

Nordic Countries Top the Happiness Charts

Year after year, Nordic countries have consistently topped the global happiness rankings, with Finland and Denmark holding the top two spots for the last six years.

These nations score highly across all key indicators used by the World Happiness Report, including GDP per capita, social support networks, trust in government, and life expectancy.

Here’s a look at how the 10 happiest countries have changed between 2019 and 2024:

Rank	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024
1	Finland	Finland	Finland	Finland	Finland	Finland
2	Denmark	Denmark	Denmark	Denmark	Denmark	Denmark
3	Switzerland	Switzerland	Iceland	Iceland	Iceland	Iceland
4	Iceland	Iceland	Switzerland	Israel	Sweden	Sweden
5	Norway	Netherlands	Netherlands	Netherlands	Israel	Netherlands
6	Netherlands	Norway	Sweden	Sweden	Netherlands	Costa Rica
7	Sweden	Sweden	Norway	Norway	Norway	Norway
8	New Zealand	New Zealand	Israel	Switzerland	Luxembourg	Israel
9	Austria	Austria	New Zealand	Luxembourg	Switzerland	Luxembourg
10	Luxembourg	Australia	Austria	New Zealand	Australia	Mexico

Although Nordic states have been among the happiest countries over time, others have seen major shifts in rankings over the years.

For example, Costa Rica has seen a steady climb from #15 in 2019 to sixth in 2024, while Mexico has risen from #24 to #10 over the same period—both now ranking above the U.S. and Canada.

Meanwhile, Switzerland has slipped down the charts since ranking third in 2019 and 2020, taking the #13 spot in 2024. Similarly, Israel ranked fourth in 2022, ended up falling to #8 in 2024—likely due to the tense Israeli–Palestinian conflict over the last two years. However, it is still the happiest Middle Eastern country in the world.

Overall, seven of the 10 happiest countries in 2024 are European, including the Netherlands, Norway, and Luxembourg, with Costa Rica, Israel, and Mexico being the only outliers.

Why Are Some Countries Happier than Others?

Countries that consistently rank high in the World Happiness Report tend to offer strong social safety nets, high levels of trust in public institutions, and a strong sense of community that drives interactions between people.

In Nordic countries, for example, a combination of high GDP per capita, generous welfare systems, low corruption, and work-life balance all contribute to higher life satisfaction. In contrast, countries with political instability, economic inequality, or limited public services often score lower.

Where does this data come from?

Source: The World Happiness Report which leverages data from the Gallup World Poll.

Methodology: The World Happiness Report derives its rankings from Gallup World Poll data, surveying approximately 1,000 people per country per year across 140+ countries. The total sample size typically exceeds 140,000 respondents annually. The rankings are based on three-year averages, from 2022 to 2024. Respondents evaluate their lives using the Cantril Ladder, a 0-to-10 scale. The rankings are based on six key factors: GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom to make life choices, generosity (measured by charitable acts), and perceptions of corruption. In addition to life evaluations, the report examines emotional well-being through positive and negative affect indicators, such as laughter, worry, and sadness. The 2025 edition also emphasizes social trust and benevolence, analyzing behaviors like sharing meals, helping strangers, and returning lost wallets to assess how caring and community engagement contribute to happiness.

Criticisms: Critics of the World Happiness Report point out that survey questions measure satisfaction with socioeconomic conditions as opposed to individual emotional happiness. Additionally, there are myriad cultural differences around the world that influence how people think about happiness and life satisfaction. Finally, there can be big differences in life satisfaction between groups within a country, which are averaged out even in a nationally representative group. The report does acknowledge inequality as a factor by measuring the “gap” between the most and least happy halves of each country.

Learn More on the Voronoi App

To compare country happiness rankings from a different source, check out this graphic that visualizes the happiest countries among the world’s major economies, based on analysis from Ray Dalio’s Great Powers Index 2024.

The post Ranked: The World’s 10 Happiest Countries (2019–2024) appeared first on Visual Capitalist.

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