Happiness is important for overall well-being, improving mental and physical health and helps in leading a positive life. On Thursday, the United Nations released the World Happiness Report 2025 on the occasion of the International Day of Happiness. This year, India stood at 118th position among 147 countries.
India made slight improvement in its happiness quotient, up from 126 in 2024 to 118 this year. Surprisingly, India is unhappier than conflict-affected countries like Ukraine, Mozambique, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Gambia and Venezuela.
Yet again Finland has been named the world’s happiest country. Interestingly, it is for the eight consecutive year that the Nordic country has managed to retain its first spot.
It is noteworthy that the report is published based analysis of how the residents of 147 countries rate their quality of life. According to the report authors, factors like sharing meals with others, having somebody to count on for social support, and household size can play a crucial role in achieving happiness.
As per the latest findings, believing in the kindness of others is also much more closely tied to happiness than previously thought. As an example, the report suggests that people who believe that others are willing to return their lost wallet is a strong predictor of the overall happiness of a population.
The report has also highlighted that 19 percent of young adults across the world reported in 2023 that they have no one they could count on for social support. That is a 39 percent increase compared to 2006. The researchers have ranked all countries according to their self-assessed life evaluations averaged over 2022 to 2024.
How India has performed in life evaluation factor?
This year, India’s score improved to 4.389. In the Happiness Report 2025, there were significant improvements in people’s responses to Ranking by Life Evaluations with key variables like GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, perceptions of corruption, dystopia and others. Interestingly, factors like generosity and perception of corruption continues to affect Indians negatively.
“The six variables were originally chosen as the best available measures of factors established in both experimental and survey data as having significant links to subjective wellbeing, and especially to life evaluations,” the study stated.
In the Happiness Report 2024, India was ranked 126th out of 143 countries with a happiness score of 4.054. This was significantly lower in relation to other BRICS nations.
Outside BRICS, Finland topped the charts with a score of 7.741, and the United States (US) had a score of 6.725.
Last year, Pakistan was ranked higher (108th) with a score of 4.657, along with Nepal (93rd, score 5.158) and Myanmar (118th, score 4.354). Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan fared worse than India in the 2024 assessment.
According to the 2024 report, the lower-middle aged Indians (age between 30 and 44) were the least happy group, according to the 2024 report, with a drop in the happiness score of 1.124 from 2006-10 to 2021-23. Indian youngsters (aged below 30) were the happiest compared to other countrymen, scoring 4.281 in 2021-23.
How India has performed in Benevolence factor?
To rank the countries on benevolence, the researchers took six measures: The first three are national average frequencies of people who report engaging once or more in three benevolent acts during the past month – donating, volunteering, and helping a stranger. The remaining three indicators are quite different as the researchers capture respondents’ forecasts of how others would behave when facing an opportunity to show benevolence.
Specifically, the so-called “wallet questions” ask respondents to say how likely it is that their lost wallet or other valuable object would be returned if found by: (a) a neighbour, (b) a stranger, or (c) a police officer.
The report revealed that the Nordic countries are at the top in the rankings for expected return of wallets, and are also much higher than other countries for actual wallet return, an important benevolent act.
“The relative frequency of the other benevolent acts depends on local social and religious norms, as well as the role of private benevolence as a substitute or supplement for institutional social safety nets,” the researchers stated.
In the 2025 report, India’s ranking were as follows: Cantril Ladder (118), Donated (57), Volunteered (10), Helped a stranger (74), wallet returned by neighbour (115); by stranger (86) and police (93).
What other factors made India unhappy?
The report revealed that India along with Mexico and Egypt showed significant increases in the quality of social connection among young adults during this period. Social connections also play a crucial role in the determining the happiness of an individual.
Deaths of despair are preventable deaths due to suicide, alcohol abuse, and drug overdose. Together, they represent a form of ill-being akin to extreme unhappiness, the researchers wrote.
“The WHO Mortality Database does not include death statistics for all countries. Some do not report their mortality data to the WHO and some send data that are not in standard ICD or do not have ICD codes at all. In other countries, such as China and India, the total deaths reported to the WHO represent less than 5% of the population of the country, hence their data is deemed unreliable and not made available on the WHO Mortality Database,” the researchers wrote.
In many countries, cause of death information is difficult to obtain because the system for recording such information is not functioning or non-existent, it added.
It is worth emphasising that figures on deaths of despair in China and India are missing, it added.