The World Happiness Report for 2024 has been released, ranking global countries on their overall state of contentment. And while the United States has made the list, it has fallen from previous years.
Marking the UN’s International Day of Happiness, experts for the report useed responses from people in more than 140 nations to rank the world’s ‘happiest’ countries.
Finland has topped the list for the seventh year in a row, followed by Denmark and Iceland.
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NEW: World Happiness Report 2024 is here! Explore the full report to understand the state of global happiness, the happiest countries in the world, and what we can learn about generational differences in wellbeing.
🧵1/16 | #WHR2024 pic.twitter.com/kZFu6QVAZ3
— World Happiness Report (@HappinessRpt) March 20, 2024
According to the World Happiness Report, the United States of America came in at 23rd, and “has fallen out of the top 20 for the first time since the World Happiness Report was first published in 2012.”
The report says that this is “driven by a large drop in the wellbeing of Americans under 30.” This year, for the first time, it ranked and separated age groups per country for the overall ranking.
“For the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, happiness has decreased in all age groups, but especially for the young, so much so that the young are now, in 2021-2023, the least happy age group,” states the report.
“This is a big change from 2006-2010, when the young were happier than those in the midlife groups, and about as happy as those aged 60 and over. For the young, the happiness drop was about three-quarters of a point, and greater for females than males.”
World Happiness Report 2024- Top 30 countries
The World Happiness Report rankings are “based on a three-year average of each population’s average assessment of their quality of life. Interdisciplinary experts from the fields of economics, psychology, sociology and beyond then attempt to explain the variations across countries and over time using factors such as GDP, life expectancy, having someone to count on, a sense of freedom, generosity and perceptions of corruption.”
For a detailed breakdown, you can check out the report here.
