The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness. The World Happiness Report 2018, ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels, and 117 countries by the happiness of their immigrants.
The main focus of this year’s report, in addition to its usual ranking of the levels and changes in happiness around the world, is on migration within and between countries.
The overall rankings of country happiness are based on the pooled results from Gallup World Poll surveys from 2015-2017, and show both change and stability. There is a new top ranking country, Finland, but the top ten positions are held by the same countries as in the last two years, although with some swapping of places. Four different countries have held top spot in the four most recent reports- Denmark, Switzerland, Norway and now Finland.
All the top countries tend to have high values for all six of the key variables that have been found to support well-being: income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust and generosity.
The world’s 18 happiest countries:
- Finland
- Norway
- Denmark
- Iceland
- Switzerland
- The Netherlands
- Canada
- New Zealand
- Sweden
- Australia
- Israel
- Austria
- Costa Rica
- Ireland
- Germany
- Belgium
- Luxembourg
- United States
Source: worldhappiness.report