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,Defining a New Economic Paradigm: Report of the High-Level Meeting on Wellbeing and Happiness, Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform drawing international attention.John Helliwell, Richard Layard, Jeffrey Sachs, World Happiness Report, 2 April 2012, Columbia University Earth Institute, accessed 2014-06-29. 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.

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: life evaluation – subjective rating of overall happiness, rated by each person surveyed on a scale of 0–10. This is the only number considered in each individual country's overall ranking 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.

2026 report The 2026 report features the happiness score averaged over the years 2023–2025.