science

World Happiness Report

World Happiness Report is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand World Happiness Report rather than just read about it. In short: The World Happiness Report is a publication that contains articles and rankings of national happiness, based on respondent ratings of their own lives, which the report also correlates with various quality of life factors. Since 2024, the report has been published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, in partnership with Gallup, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and an independ…

Key takeaways

World Happiness Report belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect World Happiness Report to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of World Happiness Report from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The World Happiness Report is a publication that contains articles and rankings of national happiness, based on respondent ratings of their own lives, which the report also correlates with various quality of life factors. Since 2024, the report has been published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, in partnership with Gallup, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and an independent editorial board. The editorial board consists of the three founding editors, John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard, and Jeffrey D. Sachs, along with Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Lara Aknin, and Shun Wang. The report primarily uses data from the Gallup World Poll. The rankings are based on a single life evaluation question, the Cantril Ladder, in which respondents rate their current lives on a scale from 0 to 10. As of March 2026, Finland has been ranked the happiest country in the world for nine years in a row.

History In July 2011, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 65/309, also named as Happiness: Towards a Holistic Definition of Development, inviting member countries to measure the happiness of their people and to use the data to help guide public policy. The first World Happiness Report was released on 1 April 2012, as a foundational text for the UN High Level Meeting: Well-being and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm, drawing international attention. On 2 April 2012, this was followed by the first UN High Level Meeting called Wellbeing and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm, which was chaired by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, in addition to that prime minister Jigme Thinley of Bhutan, a nation that adopted gross national happiness instead of gross domestic product as their main development indicator. The first report outlined the state of world happiness, causes of happiness and misery, and policy implications highlighted by case studies. In 2013, the second World Happiness Report was issued, and in 2015 the third. Since 2016, it has been issued on an annual basis on 20 March, to coincide with the UN's International Day of Happiness.

Methods and philosophy The rankings of national happiness are based on a happiness measurement survey undertaken world-wide by the polling company Gallup, Inc. Nationally representative samples of respondents are asked to think of a ladder, with the best possible life for them being a 10, and the worst possible life being a 0. They are then asked to rate their own current lives on that 0 to 10 scale. The report correlates the life evaluation results with various life factors. Researchers use the reports' life factor variables to explain national-level differences in life evaluation. However, some variables, such as unemployment or inequality, are not considered. That is because comparable data are not yet available across all countries. The reports' variables only show correlation, not causation (see Correlation does not imply causation). The report measures subjective well-being using the "Cantril ladder" to reflect people's own views, rather than external judgments. The goal is to free respondents to evaluate their own well-being. The report shows how experts use well-being ratings to assess national progress. The experts are from fields including economics, psychology, survey analysis, and national statistics. Each report is organized by chapters that focus on issues relating to happiness. This includes mental illness, the objective benefits of happiness, the importance of ethics, policy implications, and links with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) approach to measuring subjective well-being and other international and national efforts.

WELLBYs

From 2021, the World Happiness Report has supported using WELLBYs (Well-Being-Adjusted Life-Years). It says that QALYs (Quality-Adjusted Life Years) only count a patient's health quality. Instead, WELLBYs should be used. The report says policy-makers should aim to increase the WELLBYs of people alive today and future generations.

Annual report topics The World Happiness Report has been published every year since 2012 (except for 2014). In addition to ranking countries' happiness and well-being levels, each report has contributing authors and most focus on a particular theme. The data used to rank countries in each report is drawn from the Gallup World Poll, as well as other sources such as the World Values Survey, in some of the reports. The Gallup World Poll questionnaire measures 14 areas within its core questions: (1) business & economic, (2) citizen engagement, (3) communications & technology, (4) diversity (social issues), (5) education & families, (6) emotions (well-being), (7) environment & energy, (8) food & shelter, (9) government and politics, (10) law & order (safety), (11) health, (12) religion & ethics, (13) transportation, and (14) work.

2025 World Happiness Report

2024 World Happiness Report

2023 World Happiness Report

2022 World Happiness Report

2021 World Happiness Report

2020 World Happiness Report

2019 World Happiness Report

2018 World Happiness Report

2017 World Happiness Report

2016 World Happiness Report

2015 World Happiness Report

2013 World Happiness Report

2012 World Happiness Report

International rankings Data is collected from people in over 150 countries. Each variable measured reveals a populated-weighted average score on a scale running from 0 to 10 that is tracked over time and compared against other countries. These variables currently include:

real GDP per capita social support healthy life expectancy freedom to make life choices generosity perceptions of corruption Each country is also compared against a hypothetical nation called Dystopia. Dystopia represents the lowest national averages for each key variable and is, along with residual error, used as a regression benchmark. The six metrics are used to explain the estimated extent to which each of these factors contribute to increasing life satisfaction when compared to the hypothetical nation of Dystopia, but they themselves do not have an effect on the total score reported for each country.

2025 report The 2025 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2022–2024.

2024 report The 2024 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2021–2023.

2023 report The 2023 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2020–2022.

2022 report The 2022 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2019–2021.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with World Happiness Report

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what World Happiness Report claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to World Happiness Report before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about World Happiness Report ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of World Happiness Report

In research: World Happiness Report appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses World Happiness Report in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: World Happiness Report is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Happiness indices, Sustainability metrics and indices, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for World Happiness Report outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study World Happiness Report in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what World Happiness Report means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain World Happiness Report out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is World Happiness Report in simple terms?

Why does World Happiness Report matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study World Happiness Report?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on World Happiness Report.