World Happiness

The World Happiness Report is a publication that contains articles and rankings of national happiness, based on respondent ratings of their own lives from a scale of 0 to 10. As of March 2022, Finland had been ranked the happiest country in the world five times in a row. Let's dive into the visualisations below to see which countries are the happiest and why.

The following map shows the happiness of different countries over the past 10 years. Generally, developed countries in Western Europe, North America and ANZ are the happiest. Conversely, under-developed countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are the saddest.

Use the filters below to analyse different regions of the world.

Distribution of Happiness in Different Regions

The multiple box plots below show how regions fair against each other. At first glance, we see that Czechia is far happier than many of its counterparts in Central and Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, the Middle East and North Africa has the largest range of perceived happiness, with both tails of the box plot stretching far past the global average in both directions.

We have seen above that different regions and nations have vastly different happiness levels. Let's take a look at the possible indicators that are related to happiness by selecting the icons below!

Who says money can't make you happy!

The bubble plot shows a high correlation between happiness and GDP. This shows that richer countries tend to be happier compared to poorer countries.

Note how Western Europe is the richest and also happiest region. It also has some of the highest social support of any region. Some East Asian countries such as Taiwan, Japan and South Korea also have very good economic production and social support score.

Free as a bird!

The bubble plot shows a moderate correlation between happiness and freedom to make life choices and perceptions of corruption. Western European countries seem to have very high level of freedom, with Finland being the most free country in the world.

Afghanistan is not only the saddest country, but also the country with the highest level of corruption and the least freedom. This may be due to the fact that the extreme military organisation Taliban has taken over the country in 2021, and still continues to make headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Generosity comes from the wallet not the heart!

Happiness and generosity appear to have a low correlation between each other. Even population density seems to be a poor indicator on predicting a nation's happiness.

Interestingly, Finland being the happiest nation in the world seems to be one of the least generous nations in Western Europe. On the other hand, countries with below average happiness such as Indonesia and Myanmar are the most generous in the world.

Smiles add miles to life!

There's a high correlation between happiness and healthy life expectancy from the bubble plot.

All Sub-Saharan African countries have relatively short healthy life expectancy and low happiness score. The only exception is Mauritius which is by far the happiest country from the region with a long healthy life expectancy. Note how population density has little to no effect on the life expectancy of nations.

Also note how most Western European countries have some of the highest healthy life expectancies in the world.

Happiness in the Long Run

From a bigger picture, it seems that the happiness levels are very consistent. No matter what timeframe is selected, the average happiness does not seem to vary too much for each region. Moreover, the general top 10 happiest countries remain more or less the same throughout the years. The bottom 10 countries however see a large change on a yearly basis.

The following interactive area chart allows brushing to view the data across the selected timeframe.

What makes a country Happy?

The 3 happiest and saddest countries have been selected from the bar chart above. Note how GDP, Social Support, Life Expectancy and Freedom seem to always have a positive correlation to happiness. Finland and New Zealand have low corruption and excellent social support, while other unfortunate countries suffer from corruption and low quality of life.

5 Happiest and Saddest Countries

Click on the lollipops to select a subset of countries, to get their average happiness.

All the top 5 happiest countries are from Western Europe. This may be due to the high GDP per capita and social security in the region as observed in the scatter plots.

Most of the unhappier countries come from the African region. Sub-Saharan Africa in particular contributes to 3 out the 5 saddest nations in the world.

On the other hand, the saddest country is Afghanistan, which is also the only South Asian country that is ranked within the bottom 10 unhappiest country in the world.

Are the Top Countries Always Happy?

Let's explore the relative ranks of the happiest nations in the world. We see that Finland has moved through every rank in the top 5 before settling in 1st position in 2016. Eventhough Denmark has slipped to 3rd place over the years, it maintains a strong average above 7.5 without fail.

Click on any of the flags to get more information on that nation, or use the slider to compare a different number of countries.

Conclusion

To sum it up, it seems that happiness in the long run is relatively constant throughout the world. While this may be bad news with regards to unhappier regions, there is still hope that as countries develop, their citizens will ultimately experience more joy. Hopefully, the nations of the world can be happier in the decades to come!