The average for 2024 based on 138 countries was 5.56 points. The highest value was in Finland: 7.74 points and the lowest value was in Afghanistan: 1.72 points. The indicator is available from 2013 to 2024. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

Finland was ranked the happiest country in the world, according to the World Happiness Report from 2025. The Nordic country scored 7.74 on a scale from 0 to 10. Two other Nordic countries, Denmark and Iceland, followed in second and third place, respectively. The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness that ranks countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be. Criticism The index has received criticism from different perspectives. Some argue that it is impossible to measure general happiness in a country. Others argue that the index places too much emphasis on material well-being as well as freedom from oppression. As a result, the Happy Planet Index was introduced, which takes life expectancy, experienced well-being, inequality of outcomes, and ecological footprint into account. Here, Costa Rica was ranked as the happiest country in the world. Afghanistan is the least happy country Nevertheless, most people agree that high levels of poverty, lack of access to food and water, as well as a prevalence of conflict are factors hindering public happiness. Hence, it comes as no surprise that Afghanistan was ranked as the least happy country in the world in 2024. The South Asian country is ridden by poverty and undernourishment, and topped the Global Terrorism Index in 2024.

The first edition of the World Happiness Report was published on April 1, 2012 (omitted from this dataset), with a methodology that ranks countries based on their Happiness Index. Since its release, this report has garnered global recognition and has been issued on a yearly basis, excluding 2014.

Happiness Index is explained by: • Dystopia (adds 1.83 Index score) + residual • GDP per capita • Social support • Healthy life expectancy • Freedom to make life choices • Generosity • Perceptions of corruption.

Dataset provided in .xlsx and .csv formats. For convenience, dataset is provided with and without NULLs.

Possible use cases & questions: Initially the dataset was meant to be used for visualization practice with BI tools, for example, Tableau.

Clean dataset without nulls: 1) “Yearly average Happiness Index change” 2) “Are there countries who’s happiness was increasing for years, but had a sudden drop in recent years?” 3) “Is there a year(s) where the average world happiness decreased compared to last year?” 4) Geo data visualization.

With nulls: 1) Practice dealing with nulls. 2) “Which countries in which year had no ranking?” Deep dive and exploration into possible causes (for example, war, internal conflict, government or policy changes, diseases) via other sources.

Columns: Country – country name. Year – year of the report. Index – Happiness Index score. Rank – country rank according to their Happiness Index score.

Reports used in this dataset: 1. The 2013 World Happiness Report provides rankings of 156 countries based on their happiness index during the period of 2010-2012. Data collected from: https://resources.unsdsn.org/world-happiness-report-2013 2. No report for 2014. 3. The 2015 World Happiness Report provides rankings of 158 countries based on their happiness index during the period of 2012-2014. 4. The 2016 World Happiness Report provides rankings of 157 countries based on their happiness index during the period of 2013-2015. 5. The 2017 World Happiness Report provides rankings of 155 countries based on their happiness index during the period of 2014-2016. 6. The 2018 World Happiness Report provides rankings of 156 countries based on their happiness index during the period of 2015-2017. 7. The 2019 World Happiness Report provides rankings of 156 countries based on their happiness index during the period of 2016-2018. 8. The 2020 World Happiness Report provides rankings of 153 countries based on their happiness index during the period of 2017-2019. 9. The 2021 World Happiness Report provides rankings of 149 countries based on their happiness index during the period of 2018-2020. 10. The 2022 World Happiness Report provides rankings of 146 countries based on their happiness index during the period of 2019-2021. 11. The 2023 World Happiness Report provides rankings of 137 countries based on their happiness index during the period of 2020-2022.

If not stated differently, data collected from: https://worldhappiness.report/

Licence: CDLA-Permissive-1.0

Notes: Please note that some country names have been shortened, for example, “Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China” was shortened to “Hong Kong”.

Additional notes: [name in older Reports, other data sources] = [name used in this file] [data source] • Czech Republic = Czechia [1] • Macedonia = North Macedonia [2] • Turkey = Turkiye [3]

Data sources: 1) https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/country-profiles/czechia_en 2) https://www.strasbourg-europe.eu/macedonia/ 3) https://www.un.org/en/about-us/member-states/turkiye

Update History: 2023-03-14—2023-03-17 – initial data collection for 2013-2022. 2023-03-25 – updated for 2023.

Dataset Card for World Happiness Report

  Dataset Summary





  Context

The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness. The first report was published in 2012, the second in 2013, the third in 2015, and the fourth in the 2016 Update. The World Happiness 2017, which ranks 155 countries by their happiness levels, was released at the United Nations at an event celebrating International Day of Happiness on March 20th. The report continues… See the full description on the dataset page: https://huggingface.co/datasets/nateraw/world-happiness.

Afghanistan was ranked the least happy country in the world, according to the World Happiness Report from 2025. The country scored only 1.36 on a scale from 0 to 10. Afghanistan has been troubled by low levels of human development, and the situation in the country has worsened for many after the Taliban regained control of the country in 2021. Sierra Leone and Lebanon were ranked as the second and third least happy countries in the world, respectively. The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness that ranks countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be.

Libya was ranked the happiest country in Africa, according to the World Happiness Report for 2024. This nation scored 5.87 points on a scale from 0 to 10 and ranked 66th among 143 countries globally. Worldwide, Finland is considered to be the happiest country. The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness that ranks countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be. The measurement of subjective well-being relies on three main indicators: life evaluations, positive emotions, and negative emotions.

The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness. The first report was published in 2012, the second in 2013, the third in 2015, and the fourth in the 2016 Update. The World Happiness 2017, which ranks 155 countries by their happiness levels, was released at the United Nations at an event celebrating International Day of Happiness on March 20th. The report continues to gain global recognition as governments, organizations and civil society increasingly use happiness indicators to inform their policy-making decisions. Leading experts across fields – economics, psychology, survey analysis, national statistics, health, public policy and more – describe how measurements of well-being can be used effectively to assess the progress of nations. The reports review the state of happiness in the world today and show how the new science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness.

The happiness scores and rankings use data from the Gallup World Poll. The scores are based on answers to the main life evaluation question asked in the poll. This question, known as the Cantril ladder, asks respondents to think of a ladder with the best possible life for them being a 10 and the worst possible life being a 0 and to rate their own current lives on that scale. The scores are from nationally representative samples for the years 2013-2016 and use the Gallup weights to make the estimates representative. The columns following the happiness score estimate the extent to which each of six factors – economic production, social support, life expectancy, freedom, absence of corruption, and generosity – contribute to making life evaluations higher in each country than they are in Dystopia, a hypothetical country that has values equal to the world’s lowest national averages for each of the six factors. They have no impact on the total score reported for each country, but they do explain why some countries rank higher than others.

The average for 2024 based on 48 countries was 6.62 points. The highest value was in Finland: 7.74 points and the lowest value was in Hong Kong: 5.32 points. The indicator is available from 2013 to 2024. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

According to the UN's World Happiness Report, China's happiness index ranged at 5.97 points in 2024. China ranked 60th out of 143 countries. Finland, Denmark, and other European countries held the top spots in the ranking, while Afghanistan stayed at the bottom of the list. What is the happiness index? The happiness index is based on a Cantril ladder survey which is carried out annually worldwide by the polling company Gallup. Nationally representative samples of respondents are asked to value the quality of their lives at the survey moment on a 0 to 10 scale, with the worst possible life as zero and the best possible life as ten. The first World Happiness Report was published in 2012, and since then, governments are increasingly using its insights to orient public policies towards happiness. Surge in happiness in China In 2024, the happiness index in China was the highest since the beginning of the survey series. The growth in the sense of happiness has been consistent over the years except for a short period of 2018-2019. As happiness is hard to quantify, the reasons behind the dip in the curve during that time can only be hypothesized. The happiness index of 5.19 points in 2019, which was in the lower 50 percentile, did not seem to correlate with any of the usual suspects: the GDP growth, pollution levels, corruption or the perception of it, or even income inequality. The possible factors that could have affected people’s happiness were unemployment, insufficient social safety net, and several political issues. However, the country saw a surge in the sense of happiness from 2021 onwards. Successful containment of the COVID-19 pandemic that gave a greater feeling of security, fast economic recovery, and increase in the national pride could have been a few of the reasons behind the recent rising optimism in China.

According to the Happy Planet Index's ranking of the happiest and most environmentally sustainable countries in the world, Costa Rica was ranked as the happiest country in 2021, followed by Vanuatu and Colombia. The Happy Planet Index measures life expectancy, experienced well-being, inequality of outcomes, and ecological footprint in order to determine the countries that are able to deliver the longest and happiest, but also most sustainable lives to their residents. The Index works to measure efficiency by ranking countries relative to how they offer their people long and happy lives, for each unit of environmental output.

The average for 2024 based on 18 countries was 6.16 points. The highest value was in Costa Rica: 6.96 points and the lowest value was in Venezuela: 5.61 points. The indicator is available from 2013 to 2024. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

The average for 2024 based on 7 countries was 6.58 points. The highest value was in Canada: 6.9 points and the lowest value was in Japan: 6.06 points. The indicator is available from 2013 to 2024. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

In the Happy Planet Index's ranking of the unhappiest and least environmentally sustainable countries in the world from 2021, Qatar ranked highest with a score of only 24.3. Even though Qatar is a rich country with high scores of well-being and life expectancy, its ecological footprint is extremely poor, pulling down its index score. The Happy Planet Index measures life expectancy, experienced well-being, inequality of outcomes, and ecological footprint in order to determine the countries that are able to deliver the longest and happiest, but also most sustainable lives to their residents. The Index works to measure efficiency by ranking countries relative to how they offer their people long and happy lives, for each unit of environmental output.

The World Happiness Rating is an important indicator that evaluates the well-being of the population and how satisfied people are with their lives in general. The state support of citizens, the level of freedom, generosity, life expectancy, perception of corruption and more are evaluated.

The average for 2024 based on 10 countries was 5.4 points. The highest value was in Singapore: 6.52 points and the lowest value was in India: 4.05 points. The indicator is available from 2013 to 2024. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

Georgia: Happiness Index, 0 (unhappy) - 10 (happy): The latest value from 2024 is 5.19 points, a decline from 5.29 points in 2023. In comparison, the world average is 5.56 points, based on data from 138 countries. Historically, the average for Georgia from 2013 to 2024 is 4.67 points. The minimum value, 4.19 points, was reached in 2013 while the maximum of 5.29 points was recorded in 2023.

Quality of Life Index (higher is better) is an estimation of overall quality of life by using an empirical formula which takes into account purchasing power index (higher is better), pollution index (lower is better), house price to income ratio (lower is better), cost of living index (lower is better), safety index (higher is better), health care index (higher is better), traffic commute time index (lower is better) and climate index (higher is better).

Current formula (written in Java programming language):

index.main = Math.max(0, 100 + purchasingPowerInclRentIndex / 2.5 - (housePriceToIncomeRatio * 1.0) - costOfLivingIndex / 10 + safetyIndex / 2.0 + healthIndex / 2.5 - trafficTimeIndex / 2.0 - pollutionIndex * 2.0 / 3.0 + climateIndex / 3.0);

For details how purchasing power (including rent) index, pollution index, property price to income ratios, cost of living index, safety index, climate index, health index and traffic index are calculated please look up their respective pages.

Formulas used in the past

Formula used between June 2017 and Decembar 2017

We decided to decrease weight from costOfLivingIndex in this formula:

index.main = Math.max(0, 100 + purchasingPowerInclRentIndex / 2.5 - (housePriceToIncomeRatio * 1.0) - costOfLivingIndex / 5 + safetyIndex / 2.0 + healthIndex / 2.5 - trafficTimeIndex / 2.0 - pollutionIndex * 2.0 / 3.0 + climateIndex / 3.0);

The World Happiness 2017, which ranks 155 countries by their happiness levels, was released at the United Nations at an event celebrating International Day of Happiness on March 20th. The report continues to gain global recognition as governments, organizations and civil society increasingly use happiness indicators to inform their policy-making decisions. Leading experts across fields – economics, psychology, survey analysis, national statistics, health, public policy and more – describe how measurements of well-being can be used effectively to assess the progress of nations. The reports review the state of happiness in the world today and show how the new science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness.

The scores are based on answers to the main life evaluation question asked in the poll. This question, known as the Cantril ladder, asks respondents to think of a ladder with the best possible life for them being a 10 and the worst possible life being a 0 and to rate their own current lives on that scale. The scores are from nationally representative samples for 2017 and use the Gallup weights to make the estimates representative. The columns following the happiness score estimate the extent to which each of six factors – economic production, social support, life expectancy, freedom, absence of corruption, and generosity – contribute to making life evaluations higher in each country than they are in Dystopia, a hypothetical country that has values equal to the world’s lowest national averages for each of the six factors. They have no impact on the total score reported for each country, but they do explain why some countries rank higher than others.

Quality of life index, link: https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/indices_explained.jsp

Happiness store, link: https://www.kaggle.com/unsdsn/world-happiness/home

Analysis of ‘World Happiness Report’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from https://www.kaggle.com/unsdsn/world-happiness on 12 November 2021.

--- Dataset description provided by original source is as follows ---

Context

The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness. The first report was published in 2012, the second in 2013, the third in 2015, and the fourth in the 2016 Update. The World Happiness 2017, which ranks 155 countries by their happiness levels, was released at the United Nations at an event celebrating International Day of Happiness on March 20th. The report continues to gain global recognition as governments, organizations and civil society increasingly use happiness indicators to inform their policy-making decisions. Leading experts across fields – economics, psychology, survey analysis, national statistics, health, public policy and more – describe how measurements of well-being can be used effectively to assess the progress of nations. The reports review the state of happiness in the world today and show how the new science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness.

Content

The happiness scores and rankings use data from the Gallup World Poll. The scores are based on answers to the main life evaluation question asked in the poll. This question, known as the Cantril ladder, asks respondents to think of a ladder with the best possible life for them being a 10 and the worst possible life being a 0 and to rate their own current lives on that scale. The scores are from nationally representative samples for the years 2013-2016 and use the Gallup weights to make the estimates representative. The columns following the happiness score estimate the extent to which each of six factors – economic production, social support, life expectancy, freedom, absence of corruption, and generosity – contribute to making life evaluations higher in each country than they are in Dystopia, a hypothetical country that has values equal to the world’s lowest national averages for each of the six factors. They have no impact on the total score reported for each country, but they do explain why some countries rank higher than others.

Inspiration

What countries or regions rank the highest in overall happiness and each of the six factors contributing to happiness? How did country ranks or scores change between the 2015 and 2016 as well as the 2016 and 2017 reports? Did any country experience a significant increase or decrease in happiness?

What is Dystopia?

Dystopia is an imaginary country that has the world’s least-happy people. The purpose in establishing Dystopia is to have a benchmark against which all countries can be favorably compared (no country performs more poorly than Dystopia) in terms of each of the six key variables, thus allowing each sub-bar to be of positive width. The lowest scores observed for the six key variables, therefore, characterize Dystopia. Since life would be very unpleasant in a country with the world’s lowest incomes, lowest life expectancy, lowest generosity, most corruption, least freedom and least social support, it is referred to as “Dystopia,” in contrast to Utopia.

What are the residuals?

The residuals, or unexplained components, differ for each country, reflecting the extent to which the six variables either over- or under-explain average 2014-2016 life evaluations. These residuals have an average value of approximately zero over the whole set of countries. Figure 2.2 shows the average residual for each country when the equation in Table 2.1 is applied to average 2014- 2016 data for the six variables in that country. We combine these residuals with the estimate for life evaluations in Dystopia so that the combined bar will always have positive values. As can be seen in Figure 2.2, although some life evaluation residuals are quite large, occasionally exceeding one point on the scale from 0 to 10, they are always much smaller than the calculated value in Dystopia, where the average life is rated at 1.85 on the 0 to 10 scale.

What do the columns succeeding the Happiness Score(like Family, Generosity, etc.) describe?

The following columns: GDP per Capita, Family, Life Expectancy, Freedom, Generosity, Trust Government Corruption describe the extent to which these factors contribute in evaluating the happiness in each country. The Dystopia Residual metric actually is the Dystopia Happiness Score(1.85) + the Residual value or the unexplained value for each country as stated in the previous answer.

If you add all these factors up, you get the happiness score so it might be un-reliable to model them to predict Happiness Scores.

Start a new kernel

--- Original source retains full ownership of the source dataset ---

Dataset Card for World Happiness Report

  Dataset Summary





  Context

The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness. The first report was published in 2012, the second in 2013, the third in 2015, and the fourth in the 2016 Update. The World Happiness 2017, which ranks 155 countries by their happiness levels, was released at the United Nations at an event celebrating International Day of Happiness on March 20th. The report continues… See the full description on the dataset page: https://huggingface.co/datasets/reach-vb/world-happiness-clone.

The "World Happiness Dataset" is a comprehensive and meticulously curated collection of data that offers insights into the well-being and happiness levels of countries around the world. This dataset is a valuable resource for researchers, policymakers, and anyone interested in understanding the factors that contribute to happiness on a global scale.