Comparison may be the thief of joy, but not if you’re from Finland.
Despite sharing a border with an at-war Russia and receiving limited winter sunlight, the Nordic nation has been ranked the world’s happiest country for the eighth year in a row. Americans, meanwhile, seem to get more unhappy with each passing year.
That’s according to the 2025 World Happiness Report, published Thursday, which ranks over 140 countries and regions based on residents’ self-assessments. The survey was conducted by the University of Oxford in partnership with analytics firm Gallup and the United Nations.
In the rankings of happiness haves and have-nots, the U.S. dropped to its lowest ever spot at No. 24, continuing its decline from a peak of the 11th place over a decade ago. The report described political polarization as a result of growing despair among Americans.
“The decline in life satisfaction explains the overall rise in anti-system votes but trust in others then comes into play,” the report said, with “unhappy people attracted by the extremes of the political spectrum.”
As for what has caused the downward spiral in the U.S., “on-going challenges around cost of living, economic uncertainty and political polarization may have played a role,” said Mark Williamson, CEO of the U.K.-based nonprofit Action for Happiness. “We have also observed a significant increase in anxiety in the population.”
Finland’s Nordic neighbors continued to dominate the top of the rankings, with Denmark, Iceland and Sweden making up the rest of the top four, just as they did last year.
In contrast, the world’s unhappiest country was once again Afghanistan, where the Taliban continues to make life “especially difficult” for women and girls, limiting their access to education and employment.
Sierra Leone, a country in West Africa plagued by significant human rights violations, was the second least happy country, while Lebanon ranked third from the bottom, with its past year marked by an ongoing economic crisis and war between Hezbollah — the Iran-backed militia based in the country — and Israel.
Despite GDP per capita in the U.S. and Western Europe having continually risen since the mid-2000s, a drop in the happiness of Western democracies “could be blamed on the feelings of financial insecurity and loneliness experienced by Americans and Europeans — two symptoms of a damaged social fabric,” the report said.
Declining social trust explains a “large share” of the rise in political polarization and anti-system votes exemplified by the election of President Donald Trump in the U.S. and Brexit in Britain. The U.K., for instance, came in 20th, marking its lowest reading since 2017.
In a sign of growing loneliness, more Americans are dining solo. About 1 in 4 reported that they ate all their meals alone the previous day — a 53% increase since 2003.
In the U.S., young adults reported the lowest happiness and social connection of all age groups, researchers said, with loneliness among young people rising globally as well. In 2023, almost 1 in 5 young adults reported having no one for social support.
But the report does include some suggestions about how to promote a more contended society: try having more faith in other people and being nicer to them.
The study found that strangers are actually twice as kind as people expect, with the frequency with which people’s lost wallets were returned to them double the rate at which those surveyed thought.
“The most heart-warming and important finding from this report is that people are much kinder than we think they are,” Williamson said. “Kindness ripples outwards and our expectations about kindness matter.”
