The Finns have been ranked as the happiest people in the world for the seventh consecutive year, as per the 2024 World Happiness Report released on March 20. Additionally, other Nordic countries like Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and Norway remain in the top 10.
Since 2012, a group of global organizations has been publishing these happiness rankings and comprehensive well-being reports almost every year, following the United Nations General Assembly's declaration of March 20 as the International Day of Happiness. These rankings offer countries a means to measure national success and develop policies that improve well-being, beyond economic indicators such as gross domestic product, which promotes excessive growth.
While there may be advantages to moving beyond standard economic measures in assessing a country's success, the definition of happiness varies across the world.
Cultural influences play a role in how individuals from different countries respond to happiness surveys, according to macropsychologist Kuba Krys of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, who is not associated with the report. Krys cautions against making sweeping claims based on such comparisons.
The current definition and understanding of happiness may also reflect a Western bias, which is prevalent in societies classified as WEIRD — Western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic, as noted by Krys, a social scientist.
The happiness report's rankings are based on responses to one question in the Gallup World Poll: "Imagine a ladder with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. Suppose we say that 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?"
On average, Finnish respondents place just below the eighth rung. In contrast, U.S. respondents stand approximately one rung lower, placing them in 23rd position. Additionally, individuals in Afghanistan have not reached the second rung.
Happiness Ranking
The World Gallup Poll instructs individuals to envision their life on a scale, where 0 represents the worst possible life and 10 signifies the best. These scores are then averaged by country to generate the World Happiness rankings. As usual, the Nordic countries topped the 2024 list, with non-Western countries like India and Tanzania ranking lower. However, many researchers argue that this method of comprehending and measuring happiness is biased toward Western perspectives, posing issues for such rankings.
However, Krys and others doubt whether these scores can be meaningfully compared across countries. For example, when researchers questioned 200 people in Tanzania, a low-ranking country, about how they selected their position on the ladder, they discovered that just over a third, most of whom had limited formal education, did not understand the question. One woman hesitated between scores of 0 and 10, while another increased her score from 6 to 8, believing it would benefit her financially, as reported by cultural psychologist Michael Kaufman and colleagues in 2022 in the International Journal of Wellbeing.
Kaufman, an international development consultant in Chicago, wonders if people with a 7th grade education can understand the Western idea of ranking life experiences on a scale. He says the answer is no.
Mohsen Joshanloo, a personality and cultural psychologist, also points out that many people, especially outside the West, worry that admitting to being very happy might lead to something bad happening. This fear may lower their scores on a standardized survey, according to his research findings., his research shows.
Joshanloo, from Keimyung University in South Korea, says that the fear of happiness is a real issue that affects how people worldwide experience and express their happiness, as well as how they answer questions about their happiness.
Similarly, Krys' research indicates that not everyone desires maximum happiness. His team analyzed survey responses from nearly 13,000 people in 49 countries. Instead of answering from their own perspective, participants were asked to assess how much an “ideal or perfect person” would agree with various statements about happiness.
The statements included reflections on happiness like “In most ways, my life is close to my ideal,” and “The conditions of my life are excellent.” Participants rated from 1 for “doesn’t describe him/her at all” to 9 for “describes him/her exactly.”
The concept of ideal happiness varied greatly among different countries, according to Krys and colleagues. They found that around 85 percent of participants in Germany and Iceland believed that ideal happiness was reflected in scores of 7 and higher. Meanwhile, in countries like Bhutan, Ghana, Nigeria, Japan, and Pakistan, 70 percent or more of the respondents chose a lower ideal level of happiness., Krys and colleagues found. In Germany and Iceland, roughly 85 percent of participants responded that ideal happiness equated with scores of 7 and higher. But in Bhutan, Ghana, Nigeria, Japan and Pakistan, 70 percent or more of the respondents selected a lower ideal, the team reported in February in Perspectives on Psychological Science.
Krys mentions that Westerners are mainly driven by the idea of maximizing everything and wanting more. However, this is not a universal perspective.
Researchers could theoretically adjust rankings to reflect a culture’s ideal level of happiness. However, Krys believes that focusing solely on happiness is problematic.
Research indicates that non-Westerners place more importance on other aspects of a good life, such as harmony, spirituality, or meaning. This can sometimes lead to conflicting scores in different categories. For example, poor countries that have low scores in happiness often have high scores in meaning in life, researchers reported in 2014 in the Journal of Research in Personality. Conversely, the opposite is true for wealthier nations.
Lara Aknin, a social psychologist at Simon Fraser University in Canada, and a report co-editor, mentions that researchers working on the World Happiness Report are actively studying other measures of well-being that are potentially more widely applicable.
In 2022, the report researchers explored the concepts of balance and harmony by examining questions related to those concepts in the 2020 Gallup World Poll. The team found that people worldwide value those concepts, and generally, people everywhere prefer a peaceful life over an exciting one.
“The results … indicate that many individuals around the globe, not only those outside of North America, go through and prefer equilibrium and concord,” Aknin says.
Krys and others suggest that the answer is not to eliminate happiness rankings. Instead, they would like the authors of the report to release a wider range of well-being rankings. “Happiness is the ultimate goal in the World Happiness Report,” Krys says. “But happiness is not the universal, exclusive … objective of people’s lives.”
