Happiness statistics show how people evaluate their lives, experience emotions, feel connected to others, and respond to work and school environments. The 2026 World Happiness Report ranked 147 countries using average life evaluations from 2023–2025, while recent UK and U.S. measures add indicators for hope, relationships, and workplace happiness.
Contents
- Global happiness rankings
- How life evaluations changed
- Young people and life evaluation
- Negative emotions among under-25s
- School belonging and life satisfaction
- Recent UK happiness indicators
- Workplace happiness in the United States
Global happiness rankings
The International evidence on happiness and social media reports that the 2026 World Happiness Report ranked 147 countries by average life evaluation for 2023–2025. Life evaluation uses a 0–10 scale, so these rankings describe how people assess their lives overall rather than measuring a single emotion on a particular day.
The gap between the highest- and lowest-ranked countries was more than 6 points on that scale. At the top, the 20 highest-ranked countries occupied a spread of less than 1 point. By contrast, the spread among the 20 lowest-ranked countries was about three times the spread among the top 20. The 107 countries outside the top and bottom 20 covered the remaining 2.4 points of the global life-evaluation range.
The six highest-ranked countries were:
| Rank | Country |
|---|---|
| 1 | Finland |
| 2 | Iceland |
| 3 | Denmark |
| 4 | Costa Rica |
| 5 | Sweden |
| 6 | Norway |
Costa Rica’s fourth-place position was the highest-ever position achieved by a Latin American country. These results are rankings for the 2023–2025 measurement period, published in the 2026 report; they are not a forecast of future national happiness.
How life evaluations changed
Long-term comparisons in the same World Happiness Report cover the change from 2006–2010 to 2023–2025. Among 136 countries with comparable data, 79 had statistically significant gains in life evaluation and 41 had statistically significant declines. The figures therefore describe a mix of upward and downward movement rather than a single global trend.
Twenty-one countries gained at least 1 point on the 0–10 scale, while eight countries recorded declines of more than 1 point. The five largest long-term gainers were Serbia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Latvia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In a separate comparison of the 2013 and 2026 ranking periods, Togo’s average life evaluation rose by almost 1.4 points, while Afghanistan’s fell by almost 2.7 points.
Western industrial countries were among the areas with more negative movement: 15 had significant life-evaluation declines, compared with 4 significant increases. The report also records a particularly low result for Afghan women, who reported average life satisfaction of 1.26 points on the 0–10 scale in 2023–2025. For comparison within the report’s framework, the calculated Dystopia benchmark had a life-evaluation score of 1.16.
These comparisons should be read with their periods attached. A long-term change from 2006–2010 to 2023–2025 is not directly interchangeable with a single 2023–2025 ranking, and the ranking-period comparison for Togo and Afghanistan covers a different interval.
Young people and life evaluation
The World Happiness Report also compares under-25s across regions. Its baseline period is 2006–2011, and the later comparison runs from 2006–2011 to 2020–2025. NANZ under-25s had a baseline average life evaluation of 7.542 on the 0–10 scale. The corresponding baseline was 7.309 in Western Europe, 7.33 in the UK and Ireland, and 6.403 in Latin America.
The direction of change differed substantially by region:
| Region | Baseline average life evaluation | Change to 2020–2025 |
|---|---|---|
| NANZ | 7.542 | −0.812 |
| Western Europe | 7.309 | −0.312 |
| UK and Ireland | 7.33 | −0.416 |
| Latin America | 6.403 | +0.264 |
NANZ refers to the regional grouping used in the report. Its decline was 0.500 points larger than the Western European decline and 0.396 points larger than the UK-and-Ireland decline. Compared with Latin America’s increase, the NANZ change was 1.076 points lower. The baseline levels and later changes are separate measurements: a higher starting point does not automatically mean a larger later decline.
Negative emotions among under-25s
Life evaluation is only one part of well-being. The report also tracks worry, sadness, anger, and overall negative affect among under-25s from 2006–2011 to 2020–2025. In NANZ, worry increased by 0.102 points, sadness by 0.093 points, anger by 0.031 points, and overall negative affect by 0.055 points.
Western European under-25s saw worry increase by 0.082 points, sadness by 0.038 points, and anger by 0.028 points. In Latin America, worry increased by 0.042 points and anger by 0.024 points, while sadness showed no change, recorded as 0.000 points.
The regional pattern matters because the measures do not all move together. NANZ combined a 0.812-point decline in life evaluation with increases in each listed negative-emotion measure. Latin America recorded a 0.264-point increase in life evaluation even though worry and anger increased and sadness remained unchanged. These statistics describe group averages across the stated periods; they do not predict how every young person feels.
School belonging and life satisfaction
PISA 2022 data in the World Happiness Report connect school belonging with life satisfaction among girls in three regional groupings. For girls in Western Europe, the correlation was +0.361. It was +0.431 for girls in English-speaking countries and +0.340 for girls in Central and Eastern Europe.
The corresponding correlations for social-media hours and life satisfaction were negative: −0.098 in Western Europe, −0.142 in English-speaking countries, and −0.088 in Central and Eastern Europe. In the 47-country PISA sample, the school-belonging association with life satisfaction was six times the social-media-use association.
Among English-speaking girls, the belonging association was 4 times the social-media-use association when comparing the reported percentile changes. Correlation describes an association, not proof that one factor directly causes another. The useful practical distinction in these figures is that the positive school-belonging relationship was larger in magnitude than the negative social-media-hours relationship in each listed regional group.
Recent UK happiness indicators
The Beyond GDP insights, UK measures of National Well-being provides several UK indicators from different measurement dates. In October–December 2025, 8.1% of adults reported low happiness and 4.9% reported low life satisfaction.
Other measures were more positive but cover different periods. In April 2026, 64.4% of adults reported feeling hopeful about their future. In September 2025, 85.8% were satisfied with their social relationships. These percentages should not be combined into one index: each refers to a different question and, in some cases, a different period.
Together, the figures show why a single happiness percentage can be incomplete. Low happiness and low life satisfaction capture people at the less positive end of two measures, while hope and social-relationship satisfaction capture other dimensions of well-being. A person’s response can differ across all four indicators.
Workplace happiness in the United States
The Vital Signs: Health Worker–Perceived Working Conditions and Symptoms of Poor Mental Health — Quality of Worklife Survey, United States, 2018–2022 reports the share of workers who said they were very happy in 2022. Among U.S. health workers, 29.7% were very happy. The share was 20.5% among other essential workers and 26.3% among all other workers.
The same survey shows declines between 2018 and 2022 for each group:
| Worker group | 2018 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|
| Health workers | 32.0% | 29.7% |
| Other essential workers | 33.9% | 20.5% |
| All other workers | 33.6% | 26.3% |
The largest reported drop was among other essential workers, from 33.9% in 2018 to 20.5% in 2022. Health workers declined from 32.0% to 29.7%, while all other workers declined from 33.6% to 26.3%. These are survey results for the stated U.S. worker categories and years, so they should not be treated as current estimates beyond the reported 2022 period.
Across the global, youth, school, community, and workplace measures, happiness statistics point to several distinct questions: how people evaluate their lives, which emotions they report, whether they feel they belong, how hopeful they feel, and whether work supports happiness. Keeping the scale, geography, population, source, and measurement period visible is essential when interpreting the numbers.