A collective measure of happiness is incredibly difficult to define.
While economic opportunity and education can certainly enhance people’s well-being, happiness is often assessed through different lenses. These include ‘inner’ factors like personal harmony and ‘outer’ factors such as social interactions, as well as a ‘task’ focus, such as finding fulfillment in work.
This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, shows the happiest countries among the world’s major economies, based on analysis from Ray Dalio’s Great Powers Index 2024.
Methodology
To analyze the happiness of leading nations, Dalio looked at the following metrics:
Share of Population Reported Happy
Reported Life Satisfaction (1-10)
Share of Population Reported Daily Enjoyment
Share of Population Reports Having Good Social Support Network
Suicide Rate (Per 100,000 People)
For the rankings, countries were analyzed using z-scores, which represent the amount of standard deviations they are from the dataset’s mean.
The Happiest Countries Across Major World Economies
Below, we show the happiest countries across 24 major nations in 2024:
Perhaps surprisingly, the UK ranks as the happiest country overall.
This ranking is bolstered by high levels of happiness among older generations, although it contrasts with the World Happiness Report, which places the UK 20th out of 143 nations in 2024. Other global indexes, including those from the UN, show the UK in a similar position.
In Indonesia, 79% of citizens consider themselves happy, outpacing the global average of 73%.
Meanwhile, the U.S. ranks 10th, demonstrating that economic strength doesn’t always correlate with happiness. In fact, over the past two decades, self-reported happiness in America has been declining, especially among younger generations.
India ranks last, likely due to widespread distrust in institutions, income inequality, and limited social mobility. South Korea, despite being the world’s 10th largest economy, also ranks near the bottom, with 74% of the population dissatisfied with the country’s social and political climate.
To learn more about this topic from a health perspective, check out this graphic on the healthiest countries across leading world economies.
