The happiest countries in the world in 2024

About the report: How is the country’s happiness level measured?

The World Happiness Report is published in partnership with Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and the WHR’s Editorial Board. Since its first edition in 2012, it has served as a tool for comparing the quality of life in different countries around the globe.

The country’s happiness index is determined by both the citizens' responses and an independent assessment of eight factors affecting quality of life. The respondents are asked to rate their own current lives on the 0 to 10 scale, where the former indicates the worst possible life, and the latter – the best one.

These factors include the following aspects:

1. GDP per capita – GDP is an abbreviation for Gross domestic product, and is meant to represent a country's economic output per person.
2. Social support – based on the binary responses (0=no, 1=yes) to the Gallup World Poll (GWP) question “If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them, or not?”
3. Healthy life expectancy at birth – calculated based on data from the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Health Observatory data repository.
4. Freedom to make life choices – binary responses to the GWP question “Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?”
5. Generosity – based on the responses to a GWP question: “Have you donated money to a charity in the past month?”
6. Perceptions of corruption – as corruption is in nature clandestine, and so, difficult to correctly measure, the two GWP questions apply only to the perception of corruption: “Is corruption widespread throughout the government or not?” and “Is corruption widespread within businesses or not?”
7. Positive affect – the average of previous-day affect measures for laughter, enjoyment, and doing interesting things. The typical affect question follows the formula of: “Did you experience the following feelings during a lot of the day yesterday?”
8. Negative affect – with the same general question as in the point above, negative affect indicates it a responder experienced worry, sadness, or anger.

It is worth noting that certain factors, such as inequality or unemployment, were not included in the ranking criteria due to a lack of comparable data across all countries.

What are the happiest countries in the world – the 2024 ranking

As in previous years, Finland placed first in the World Happiness Report for the seventh consecutive year. Generally, the results at the top of the list are similar to the findings in the previous years. Interestingly, except for Israel, all of them are part of Europe.

THE HAPPIEST COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD IN 2024

1. Finland

2. Denmark

3. Iceland

4. Sweden

5. Israel

6. Netherlands

7. Norway

8. Luxembourg

9. Switzerland

10. Australia

Where does Poland place in the ranking of the happiest countries in the world?

This year Poland moved up from 39th to 35th in the World Happiness Report ranking, which is a four-place progression from the year before. The country ranked just behind Estonia (34^th place), but, unexpectedly, ahead of countries considered by many as European El dorados, like Spain (36th) or Italy (41st), and powerful Asian economies, such as Japan (51st) and South Korea (52nd).

While not among the top-ranked nations, Poland's performance reflects a society with a relatively stable level of well-being and quality of life satisfaction.

SOURCES:

World Happiness Report 2024

World Population Review, “Happiest Countries in the World”