Australians are no longer happy little Vegemites, according to new research.
The latest World Happiness Report shows Australia has failed to make the top 10 world’s happiest countries list.
After just scraping into the top tier in 2024, the report now ranks Australia at 11th, with New Zealand just behind in 12th spot.
Nordic countries continue to lead the rankings, with Finland, Denmark and Iceland listed as the top three happiest nations.
How do the rankings in the report work?
Each year the World Happiness Report offers an insight into how countries are faring globally in terms of wellbeing, including which countries are leading the way, the countries that are struggling and what’s making a difference globally.
The report draws the majority of its data from the Gallup World Poll which measures the attitudes, behaviours and wellbeing of people from across more than 140 countries, focusing on the quality of peoples lives, how they feel on a daily basis and other key insights.
More than 100,000 people across 140 countries were surveyed.
The poll asks respondents to evaluate their current life as a whole using the image of a ladder, with the best possible life for them as a 10 and the worst possible as a 0, with each respondent providing a numerical response.
A country’s overall happiness ranking is based on a three-year average of collected responses, with about 1,000 responses gathered annually from each country since the larger sample size provides a more accurate estimate.
Key findings from the data
This year’s report focused heavily on the impact of caring and sharing on people’s happiness, highlighting the benefits to the recipients of caring behaviour and the benefits to those who care for others.
It found that people are much too pessimistic about the kindness of others. Using the example of when a wallet is dropped in the streets, researchers found that the proportion of returned wallets was far higher than people expected.
It also found that our wellbeing depends on our perceptions of others’ kindness as well as their actual goodwill, so we typically underestimate the kindness of others.
Thirdly, when a society is more benevolent overall, the people who benefit most are those who are least happy.
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Finally the report found that kindness increased during Covid in every region of the world since people needed more help and others responded, which resulted in creating a “kindness bump”.
So which countries are happiest?
According to the report, Nordic countries are still leading the happiness rankings, with Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden still in the top four and in the same order.
This year’s top 20 includes two countries from Latin America, with Costa Rica at sixth and Mexico at 10th, and one from the Middle East, with Israel ranking eighth.
In general, the report found that western industrial countries are now less happy than they were between 2005 and 2010, and for the first time, none of the large industrial powers ranked in the top 20.
In 2013 the top 10 countries were all western industrial countries, but now only seven are.
Industrial countries that were pushed out of the top 10 happiest countries in the world between 2013 and 2025 included Switzerland (3 in 2013, 1 in 2015, and 13 in 2025), Canada (6 in 2013 and 18 in 2025), and Australia (10 in 2013 and 11 in 2025).
Top 10 happiest countries in the world, 2025:
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Finland
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Denmark
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Iceland
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Sweden
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The Netherlands
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Costa Rica
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Norway
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Israel
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Luxembourg
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Mexico
