Who Are The Happiest People in the World?

Finland is not the happiest country.

I don’t really know why Finland always ranks top for happiness.

I don’t feel very happy.

If that’s true, I’d hate to see the other nations.

— Reactions from people in Finland after the release

of the World Happiness Report

If I were to ask you, "Who are the happiest people in the world?" what would your response be? Perhaps people residing in Finland, Norway, or Denmark? If that's the case, you're likely aware of the widely-recognized study on happiness: the World Happiness Report (WHR). But if you guessed a country in Latin America, you're not wrong either (and I'll clarify why shortly).

In affiliation with the United Nations, the WHR is produced annually by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), a network of academics including Lord Richard Layard, John Helliwell, and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve . According to the authors, “The WHR is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness that ranks 156 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be.”

The landmark survey the authors mention is conducted by Gallup . Known as the Gallup World Poll, this survey is the world’s most extensive study on how people’s lives are going. Each year, the World Poll covers roughly 140 different languages in over 140 countries. And to date, the World Poll has been conducted in over 160 countries and in 171 different languages. In Africa alone, we have interviewed in 82 different languages.

The WHR’s conclusion that the happiest people live in the Nordic countries is supported by prominent academics, robust data, and the U.N.’s imprimatur. But is it right?

That depends on how you define happiness. The WHR measures happiness using the results of one question that Gallup poses to the world:

Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?

Does that question measure happiness — or contentment?

According to Minna Tervamäki, recognized as the most positive person in Finland, it measures contentment. She expressed mixed feelings about the happiness survey to BBC Travel, stating, "Finnish people read it and laugh, like 'What? Us?' In my opinion, Finns are more content than happy."

The world-famous happiness rankings are probably not a reflection of happiness, but what if the report was called the World Contentment Report? Would you read it?

In the 2012 WHR, the authors admitted that they used the word “happiness” to get more attention:

“Subjective well-being” is the general expression used to cover a range of individual self-reports of moods and life assessments. The word “happiness” is often used in an equally general way, as in the title of this report. It does help to focus thinking, and attracts attention more quickly than does “subjective wellbeing.” But there is a risk of confusion.

The authors agree that “subjective wellbeing” is the most accurate terminology, but they “nonetheless wrote their own books with ‘happiness’ in the title because they or their editors [knew] that happiness [would] draw more reader interest than does subjective well-being,” according to the 2015 WHR.

But not everyone likes using the word “happiness” for this kind of research. Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, once said, “My original view was closest to Aristotle’s — that everything we do is done in order to make us happy — but I actually detest the word happiness, which is so overused that it has become almost meaningless. It is an unworkable term for science, or for any practical goal such as education, therapy, public policy, or just changing your personal life.”

Seligman likely has a point, but "happiness" remains a term that captures people's attention. This is why many opt for “happiness” as a shorthand for “subjective wellbeing.” Gallup, on the other hand, takes a broader approach to measuring subjective wellbeing. Here is how we do it.

How Do You Measure Happiness?

How do you measure the life of a woman or a man?

— “Seasons of Love” from the musical Rent, by Jonathan Larson

When someone’s father dies, most governments record the time and cause of his death. These records are called objective indicators because whether someone dies is not a matter of opinion.

But what about the pain his death caused his family, friends, and community? Those emotions are captured through subjective indicators of wellbeing.

This chart illustrates the differences between these indicators that help us better understand how humanity is doing.

Subjective wellbeing is divided into two constructs: how someone sees their life and how they live their life. The first part is an overall assessment of their life; the second is how they experience their life each day.

Both aspects are critical because they measure different things. For example, look at two middle-aged Americans, one with young children and one without. How do they see life, and how do they experience life? Both rate their lives similarly, but they experience life differently. The person with young children experiences more positive and negative emotions. Meaning, the person with children is more likely to experience stress, sadness, and anger; they are also more likely to experience joy and laughter.

Another reason why both constructs are so important to measure has to do with income. Money plays a significant role in how people see their lives but makes far less of an impact on how people live their lives. More money makes you see your life better, but it will not necessarily buy you less stress or more laughter.

How People See Their Lives (Life Evaluation)

The first component of wellbeing is evaluative wellbeing, which measures how someone sees their life. People are asked to evaluate or rate their lives using the ladder scale, which, again, is:

Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?

We also ask a follow-up question to measure how much hope people have about the future:

Just your best guess, on which step do you think you will stand in the future, say about five years from now?

Globally, people rate their lives a 5.3. Most of the world believes that life will be better in five years — rating their future lives a 6.7.

As I mentioned earlier, the World Happiness Report (WHR) uses only the first item for its rankings. This is why Finns are “the happiest people in the world” — they rate their lives the highest; Afghans rate their lives the worst.

If you were expecting Denmark to be No. 1, it is because they used to be No. 1. In fact, they were No. 1 for four years in a row. Denmark may still be No. 1 because the statistical difference between Denmark and Finland is not meaningful — they are in a statistical tie. Haiti is often on the list of countries where people rate their lives the worst, but we have not conducted a survey there since 2018. In that survey, Haitians’ average life rating was 3.6 — the 136th lowest life ratings out of 143 countries we measured in 2018.

Lebanon’s presence on the lowest life ratings list is a more recent phenomenon. From 2006 to 2018, Lebanese rated their lives about a 5 on average. But starting in 2019, those ratings collapsed — falling to 4 in 2019, 2.6 in 2020, and 2.2 in 2021. Gallup’s 2019 survey in Lebanon was conducted one month following the October 17 revolution, and the 2020 survey was conducted two months after the Beirut explosion.

How People Live Their Lives (Experiential Wellbeing)

The second component of wellbeing is experiential wellbeing, which measures how someone lives their life. It quantifies how much people experience laughter, anger, sadness, and intellectual stimulation.

Asking millions of people about their daily emotions is a massive linguistic undertaking. The process is more complicated than just translating concepts into over roughly 140 languages. This is what makes it hard to ask about every emotion.

Take love, for example. It would be fascinating to know where in the world people feel the most loved and why. But love is hard to translate. We tried quantifying love by asking: Did you experience a lot of love all day yesterday?

We found that 70% of the world felt loved — with the most love reported in the Philippines (93%), Rwanda (92%), and Puerto Rico (89%). We found the least amount of love in Armenia (28%), Mongolia (30%), and Uzbekistan (31%).

However, these rankings probably aren’t right. In the West, respondents interpreted “love” as we intended: “an intense feeling of deep affection.” But that was not how people everywhere understood it. In some cultures, respondents did not interpret it as emotional love, but instead as physical love. You can ask anything you want and get a response, but it does not mean you are measuring the same thing in every country.

Another example is the word “risk.” As part of the Lloyd's Register Foundation World Risk Poll, we asked, “When you hear the word ‘risk,’ do you think more about opportunity or danger?”

Globally, 60% think danger, and 21% think opportunity (8% say both and 11% say neither, don’t know, or refused to answer). But then look at the results by the language the survey was administered in. If you ask native Spanish speakers about risk (riesgo), 85% hear the word and think danger (12% think opportunity). If you ask someone whose native language is English, 67% who hear the word think danger, and 27% think opportunity.

Here is how people responded to this question in six of the world’s most commonly spoken languages.

The differences in perceived risk may not even be a linguistic issue — they might be more of a cultural influence. But the point remains: Language matters when you are conducting global surveys.

The last and most relevant example has to do with the word “happy.” You might be wondering: Why doesn’t Gallup just ask people how happy they are?

We tried it. We asked Americans if they experienced happiness during a lot of the day yesterday. Eighty-nine percent of Americans said they did — North Dakotans were the most likely to report feeling happy (93%); West Virginians were the least likely (86%).

But the question does not work globally. “Happy” does not translate well across languages and dialects. According to Australian National University linguist Anna Wierzbicka, “It is an illusion… to think that the English words happy and happiness have exact semantic equivalents in Chinese or, for that matter, in other European languages.”

Measuring Joy, Respect, Sadness, and Anger

When measuring emotions, negative and positive emotions must be quantified separately because they are relatively independent of each other, according to research by University of Chicago Provost Norman Bradburn in the 1960s. The absence of negative emotions does not necessarily mean a person is experiencing a lot of positive emotions. Conversely, the absence of positive emotions does not mean they are experiencing negative emotions.

People can also feel very little of either positive or negative emotions. Or, they can feel a lot of both. For example, imagine attending a funeral for your grandfather who died of old age. Think of the emotions you would experience that day. You are sad because you miss him, but you feel happy remembering the good times with him. Plus, you are surrounded by loved ones. You experience sadness, happiness, love, and maybe a little loneliness all in the same day.

After testing the names of a number of emotions, we found 10 that work across cultures: five that measure positive experiences and five that measure negative experiences. The five positive experiences are enjoyment, learning or doing something interesting, feeling well-rested, smiling and laughing, and feeling treated with respect. The five negative experiences are anger, stress, sadness, physical pain, and worry.

Despite all the challenges facing the world, it is amazing to see that so many people still find a way to have fun: 73% report smiling and laughing a lot, and 71% experience a lot of enjoyment. They also feel a lot of respect (86%). Of the 10 experiences we measure, respect was the one people reported feeling the most.

Gallup’s positive experiences list is dominated by Latin American countries, which has been true every year in our tracking. But the most remarkable thing about this list is how little it correlates with income. For example, Guatemala and El Salvador rank in the bottom half of the world for income — yet they are among the most likely in the world to report positive experiences.

And notice how different this list is from the life evaluation rankings (which are mostly Nordic countries). So are Latin Americans the happiest people in the world instead of the Finns and Danes? Before jumping to that conclusion, look at the countries where people experience the most negative emotions.

The No. 1 region is — by far — the Middle East and North Africa. This may not be surprising considering the sanctions and war that the region faces. Countries such as Iraq and Iran are on Gallup’s “most negative countries in the world” list almost every year. And while the scores above are a three-year average, Afghanistan’s score in 2021 alone was 63, which is the highest score we have ever recorded for negative emotions.

The second-highest Negative Experience Index score in our history was 61, in the civil-war-torn Central African Republic in 2017. We were unable to interview in 40% of the country due to security concerns, but had we been able to conduct interviews in those areas, this score may have been even higher. Because of the ongoing conflict, we have not been back to any part of the Central African Republic since.

The region that ranks right behind the Middle East and North Africa in negative emotions is Latin America. But Latin America is also No. 1 in positive emotions. This re-emphasizes why measuring positive and negative emotions is so important — you can experience a lot of both.

So then where is the happiest place on Earth? The answer depends on how you define happiness.

If you think happiness is how people see their lives, then Finns are the happiest people in the world. If you think happiness is defined by how people live their lives through positive experiences such as joy and laughter, then the happiest people in the world are Latin Americans.

[The following is adapted from Gallup 's latest best-selling book Blind Spot: the Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It. The book uncovers the world's rising anger, stress, pain, worry, and sadness.]