World Happiness Report 2025 shows people are much kinder than we expect

The latest findings, published today to mark the UN’s International Day of Happiness, rank the world’s happiest countries while also providing valuable interdisciplinary insights into the wellbeing and happiness of people across the globe. 

The country rankings are based on a three-year average of each population’s average assessment of their quality of life. Experts from economics, psychology, sociology and beyond then analyse and seek to explain the variations across countries and over time using factors such as GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, a sense of freedom, generosity and perceptions of corruption. These factors help to explain the differences across nations, while the rankings themselves are based solely on the answers people give when asked to rate their own lives. 

The 2025 country happiness rankings reveal:  

The 2025 report also outlines that believing others are willing to return your lost wallet is a strong predictor of population happiness, with Nordic nations once again topping the world’s happiest countries list while ranking among the top places for expected and actual return of lost wallets. 

However, global evidence on the perceived and actual return of lost wallets shows that people in general are much too pessimistic about the kindness of their communities compared to reality, with actual rates of wallet return around twice as high as people expect. 

Further findings include: 

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, director of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, professor of economics at the University of Oxford, and an editor of the World Happiness Report, said: 

‘This year’s report pushes us to look beyond traditional determinants like health and wealth. It turns out that sharing meals and trusting others are even stronger predictors of wellbeing than expected. In this era of social isolation and political polarisation we need to find ways to bring people around the table again — doing so is critical for our individual and collective wellbeing.’ 

The World Happiness Report is published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, in partnership with Gallup, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and an independent editorial board. 

The editorial board consists of John F. Helliwell (University of British Columbia), Richard Layard (London School of Economics and Political Science), Jeffrey D. Sachs (Columbia University), Jan-Emmanuel De Neve (University of Oxford), Lara B. Aknin (Simon Fraser University), and Shun Wang (Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University).