According to the World Happiness Report 2024, Estonia is the 34th happiest country in the world, dropping three places from 2023; Finland is the happiest country in the world for the seventh year in a row.
In 2023, Estonia was ranked 31st out of the 137 countries covered by the report. This year, Estonia ranks 34th out of 143 countries.
Finland is, again, the happiest country in the world, according to the report, followed by Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Israel. The least happy countries, the report asserts, are Afghanistan, Lebanon, Lesotho and Sierra Leone.
Lithuania is ranked 19th and Latvia 46th.
Rankings differ for the young and the old
The index is based on the measurement of subjective well-being that relies on three main indicators: life evaluations, positive emotions and negative emotions. The happiness rankings are based on life evaluations, as the more stable measure of the quality of people’s lives.
According to the index, rankings differ a lot for the young and the old.
“In some cases these differences favour the old, as in the United States and Canada, where the rankings for those aged 60 and older are 50 or more places higher than for those under 30. In other cases, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, the reverse is true, with many rankings being more than 40 places higher for the young than for the old,” the report says.
The World Happiness Index is a publication of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, powered by data from the Gallup World Poll.
