According to the World Happiness Report 2025, released recently by Oxford University’s Wellbeing Research Centre, Finland with its strong state welfare system is the happiest country in the world, an honour it has won for the eighth consecutive year. On the other hand, Afghanistan, facing numerous humanitarian challenges, has again been ranked as the unhappiest place on earth.
The 13th annual World Happiness Report, released to mark the UN’s International Day of Happiness, ranks the world’s happiest countries by asking people to evaluate their lives. The findings of the report are based on Gallup World Poll data and other sources, including the Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll, and analysed by leading experts in wellbeing science.
The report ranks countries on the basis of a three-year average of people’s self-assessed evaluations of life satisfaction, per capita GDP, local support, healthcare and life expectancy, freedom of expression and generosity, and corruption. The study asked people to rate their own lives on a scale of 0-10, zero being the worst possible life and 10 being the best possible life. Finland took top spot with an average score of 7.736 out of 10, with Denmark coming second. The top 10 countries are:1. Finland 2. Denmark 3. Iceland 4. Sweden 5. Netherlands 6. Costa Rica 7. Norway 8. Israel 9. Luxembourg 10. Mexico. Finland came ahead of three other Nordic countries, while Latin America’s Costa Rica and Mexico entered the top 10 for the first time. Both the UK and the US slipped down the list to 23rd and 24th positions respectively – the lowest-ever for the latter.
Pakistan is placed at 109th spot among 147 countries. After Nepal which is ranked 91st, Pakistanis are the happiest people in the whole of South Asia, nine places above India at number 118, while Sri Lanka lags behind at 133rd position, and Bangladesh at 134th.
The 2025 Happiness report puts its focus on the impact of caring and sharing on people’s happiness, and findsthat trends towards increased loneliness are most evident among young persons, and that for most people in the world family is a source of joy and support.In 2023, 19 percent of young adults across the world reported having no one they could turn to for social support, a 39 percent increase compared to 2006.
The authors of the happiness report also found new evidence indicating that engaging in acts of generosity and believing in the kindness of others are “significant predictors of happiness, even more so than earning a higher salary”. The report says that sharing meals with others is strongly linked with wellbeing across the globe. Household size is closely linked to happiness, with four to five people living together enjoying the highest levels of happiness in Mexico and Europe. People who eat frequently with others are a lot happier and this effect holds even taking into account household size. The increasing number of people who eat alone is one reason for declining wellbeing in the United States. Jeffrey D. Sachs, president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, says the findings reconfirmed “happiness is rooted in trust, kindness and social connection”.
Benevolence also brings benefits to those doing the caring and sharing. This works best if the motivation is to help others (rather than to feel good yourself), if the act is voluntary, and if it has an obvious positive impact on the beneficiary. People living alone are much less happy than people who live with others. Couples who live with at least one child and those who live with children and members of their extended family have especially high average life satisfaction. Caring by the family makes people feel good. But there are other contentment-related factors that generally remain unrecognised, such as engaging in acts of generosity and believing in the kindness of others which are “significant predictors of happiness, even more so than earning a higher salary.”
In Pakistan and other South Asian countries, the joint family system is still strong, although nuclear families are also on the increase. That perhaps explains our people’s sense of well-being despite all the odds. Pakistanis are one of the most generous peoples when it comes to helping others in need. That is the reason why Pakistan has a better rating on the happiness quotient than India which is economically much stronger.
The incidence of public philanthropy is high in Pakistan. There are large numbers of social welfare organisations like the Edhi Foundation and also many hospitals which provide free of cost medical treatment to poor people. There is also an increasing trend in major cities towards providing free meals to labourers and poor people by philanthropic organisations. All these factors combine to give Pakistan a higher rating in the World Happiness Index.