SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
scandinavia
Social Democracies Keep Top Spots on World Happiness Report as US Falls to Record Low
In the U.S., "the downward trend in life satisfaction is particularly steep among young people under 30, especially women."
Mar 21, 2025
For the eighth consecutive year, the World Happiness Report on Thursday found that the countries with the happiest people are those that use their resources to invest in social welfare—and documented a precipitous drop in satisfaction among people in the United States, where President Donald Trump is pushing to destroy public services in the interest of further enriching the country's wealthiest people and corporations.
The top four happiest countries in the world were the same this year as in 2024, with Finland taking the top spot followed by Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden.
The report, compiled by the Wellbeing Research Center at University of Oxford along with Gallup and the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, found that the U.S. is continuing to fall down the list—ranking at 24, one spot lower than in 2024. In 2012, when the World Happiness Report was first published, the U.S. held the 11th spot.
The researchers measured several variables that contribute to people's happiness, including social supports, freedom to make life choices, and perceptions of corruption within their country.
Across the world, researchers recorded a drop in "deaths of despair"—preventable deaths from substance use disorders, alcohol abuse, and suicide. But the U.S. was one of two countries—the other being South Korea—where these deaths "rapidly rose," with an average yearly increase of 1.3 deaths per 100,000.
This year's World Happiness Report focuses largely on "the impact of caring and sharing" on people's happiness, noting that the prevalence of volunteering and helping strangers was high in some of the happiest countries, while social isolation in the U.S. was tied to high levels of unhappiness.
"In the United States, using data from the American Time Use Survey, the authors find clear evidence that Americans are spending more and more time dining alone," reads the report's executive summary. "In 2023, roughly 1 in 4 Americans reported eating all of their meals alone the previous day—an increase of 53% since 2003."
But the Costa Rican ambassador to the U.S., Catalina Crespo Sancho, noted at an event hosted by Semafor presenting the annual report, that the way the Costa Rican government invests public funds has helped push it into the top 10 happiest countries for the first time, with Costa Rica ranking sixth in the world.
"We're one of the few countries in the world that does not have an army," said Crespo Sancho. "All that money, they invested in things that our Nordic countries here have been doing for many, many years... Education, social services, health access."
Residents of the happiest countries named in the report benefit from significant public investment in healthcare, education, childcare, and other public services, and live in societies where the divide between the richest households and working people is far smaller than in the United States.
Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, and the Netherlands all score below 30 on the World Bank's Gini Index, which measures income inequality, while the U.S. has a score of 41.3, indicating a wider gap between the rich and poor.
The report was released two months into Trump's second term in the White House, which has already been characterized by efforts by Trump and his billionaire ally, tech mogul Elon Musk, to gut public spending on healthcare, education, and the environment in order to fund tax cuts for the richest households. The Republican Party is also aggressively pushing attacks on bodily autonomy in the U.S., passing abortion bans and so-called "fetal personhood" measures as well as laws barring transgender and gender nonconforming people from accessing affirming healthcare.
According to the report, in the U.S., "the downward trend in life satisfaction is particularly steep among young people under 30, especially women."
The report also contextualized the victory of Trump and rise of far-right movements like the president's nationalist, anti-immigration MAGA movement, noting that far-right supporters of "anti-system" political leaders like Trump "have a very low level of social trust."
For the populist right, this low trust is not limited to strangers, but also extends to others in general, from homosexuals to their own neighbors. The xenophobic inclination of the populist right, well-documented worldwide, seems to be a particular case of a broader distrust towards the rest of society. Right-wing populists throughout the world share xenophobic and anti-immigration inclinations. The Sweden Democrats, the Danish People's Party, the Finns Party, the Freedom Party of Austria, Greece's Golden Dawn, the Northern League and Fratelli in Italy, the National Rally in France, and a fraction of the Republican Party in the U.S. are all built on strong anti-immigration foundations.
Meanwhile, "far-left voters have a higher level of social trust," leading them to support "pro-redistribution, pro-immigrant" political groups that offer an alternative to the political establishment with "more universalist values."
In the United States' two-party system, citizens "with low life satisfaction and low social trust" tend to "abstain" from political engagement, according to the report.
"The fall in life satisfaction cannot be explained by economic growth," reads the report. "Rather, it could be blamed on the feelings of financial insecurity and loneliness experienced by Americans and Europeans—two symptoms of a damaged social fabric. It is driven by almost all social categories, but in particular, by the rural, the less-educated, and, quite strikingly, by the younger generation. This low level of life satisfaction is a breeding ground for populism and the lack of social trust is behind the political success of the far right."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Social Democracies Continue Happy Streak as Neoliberal US Falls Out of Top 20
"It all begins with high levels of trust between citizens and our institutions," said one official in Finland, which was ranked as the happiest country.
Mar 20, 2024
Finland and other social democracies in the Nordic region continued their streak of ranking at the top of the annual World Happiness Report, an accounting of people's attitudes and outlooks in 140 countries that was released Wednesday—but countries including the United States marked striking shifts in the level of happiness among their populations.
The U.S. fell out of the top 20 happiest countries for the first time, driven largely by declining happiness among people under 30.
The report—compiled by Oxford University's Wellbeing Research Center, Gallup, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network—found that people under age 30 in the U.S. rank 52 places behind people aged 60 and up in terms of happiness.
If only the youngest respondents were asked about their happiness levels, the U.S. would rank at number 62 in the annual report, while Americans aged 60 and up ranked at number 10 worldwide.
Researchers told The Guardian that after 12 straight years of young Americans reporting higher levels of happiness than their older counterparts, the trend flipped in 2017.
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, director of the Wellbeing Research Center and editor of the study, told the outlet that the drops in happiness among young people in North America and western Europe were "disconcerting."
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who has frequently spoken about the effects of social media on young Americans, spoke to The Guardian and highlighted high levels of social media use as a contributor to unhappiness among young people.
Murthy said it was "insane" that the U.S. has not yet passed laws regulating social media features such as "like" buttons or infinite scrolling to disincentivize frequent use of the platforms, noting that American adolescents spend an average of nearly five hours on social media.
But Jukka Siukosaari, Finland's ambassador to the U.K., attributed the country's high levels of happiness to an "infrastructure of happiness," including relative economic equality and affordable opportunities for Finnish people.
"It all begins with high levels of trust between citizens and our institutions," Siukosaari told The Guardian.
Finland's public healthcare system ranked number 3 worldwide in U.S. News and World Report's survey last year, and a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that in 2019, 64% of the Finnish population reported trusting the government, compared to an OECD average of 45%.
Finland ranked at the top of the list for the seventh year in a row, while other Nordic social democracies in the top five happiest countries included Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden.
A 2023 study published in the journal Telematics and Informatics found that similar concerns about frequent social media use among young people exist in Finland as in the U.S., with about 10% of Finnish teens displaying "problematic" use of platforms, including experiencing withdrawal from social media and continuing use even after experiencing negative consequences like anxiety and depression.
Young adults in Finland spend about 20 hours per week, or nearly three hours per day, on social media, according to the study.
Another survey by YPulsepolled young people in Western Europe about their social media use, finding they spend an average of 3.5 hours per day on social media platforms and that 84% agreed with the statement, "My generations are obsessed with social media."
But many Western European countries ranked far ahead of the U.S. in terms of the happiness of people under age 30, including Iceland (4), Denmark (5), Luxembourg (6), and the Netherlands (9).
"Social media is believed to play a part in driving down self-esteem and robbing young people of their wellbeing. But it is the lack of education, skills training, and affordable housing that underpins the decline in the positive outlook traditionally displayed in surveys by those broadly fitting the Gen Z age group," wrote Phillip Inman, an economics correspondent for The Guardian, about the rankings of the U.S. and its peers, such as the U.K. and Australia, in which happiness has also dropped precipitously for young people.
While social media use is increasingly common among young people in many countries, the decrease in happiness and life satisfaction also comes amid the rising threat of the climate emergency, with scientists reporting last year that devastating climate events like wildfires and deadly heat waves were direct consequences of continued fossil fuel extraction and planetary heating.
Young Americans are also coming of age as the wealthiest people in the country have gotten richer since the coronavirus pandemic, while millions of working families are part of what Oxfam last year called a "permanent underclass... who are denied their economic rights, trapped in poverty, and unable to accumulate wealth no matter how hard they work."
The cost of a college education in the U.S. has risen by about 40% in the last two decades, when adjusted for inflation, and housing affordability is no better—with half of renters telling Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies in January that they are paying more than they can afford to in rent.
"Young adults are being hit from all sides by a toxic combination of government policy, a housing affordability crisis, stagnating wages, and a high cost of living," the Intergenerational Foundation told The Guardian in response to the report.
Inman wrote that the latest World Happiness Report "is a warning sign to governments that have put the welfare of older people above that of younger generations."
"If young people cannot establish themselves in the workplace with a decent home and time and money to visit friends and family," said Inman, "the ramifications will boomerang on the old."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Get Unionized or Get Out!': Scandinavian Labor Elevates Fight With Tesla's Elon Musk
"The mistake Tesla made was challenging the collective agreements that set sector-specific minimum wages in Sweden, a country where 70% of the population is unionized," said one political scientist.
Dec 21, 2023
Tesla CEO Elon Musk's tough lesson in labor rights continued in Scandinavia Thursday, as one Danish progressive politician offered some advice to the electric vehicle executive: "Don't mess with Nordic unions."
Musk's refusal to sign a collective bargaining agreement for just 130 mechanics in Sweden has proven to be a significant miscalculation about the power of unions in Nordic countries, as more than a dozen collective bargaining units across Sweden have made Tesla's operations increasingly difficult in the country in solidarity with the mechanics and their demand for a minimum wage.
As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, Musk—the world's richest person—has appeared flat-footed in recent weeks as unionized postal workers, delivery drivers, and electricians have refused to work with Tesla to help pressure the company to sign the mechanics' contract.
France 24reported last week that "garbage is piling up outside Tesla centers as refuse collectors refuse to pick it up" and cleaning staff are also declining to work in Tesla showrooms.
"I cannot get enough of this story," said Sarah Anderson of the U.S. economic justice think tank Institute for Policy Studies last week.
"The mistake Tesla made was challenging the collective agreements that set sector-specific minimum wages in Sweden, a country where 70% of the population is unionized," political scientist Yohann Aucante told France 24.
Beyond Sweden, powerful unions representing dockworkers in Denmark and transit workers in Norway and Finland have made clear their members won't help Tesla circumvent the Swedish work stoppage that was started in October by the mechanics at the company's service centers.
The unions have pledged in recent weeks to block the transit of Tesla's EVs unless the company could reach an agreement, giving Musk a deadline that expired on Wednesday.
"Swedish workers have [the Transport Workers' Union]'s full support," said Ismo Kokko, president of the Finnish union AKT. "It is a crucial part of the Nordic labor market model that we have collective agreements and unions support each other... The Nordic transport unions stand united in this matter."
Musk has demonstrated little understanding of the display of solidarity that has spread from Sweden to its neighboring countries—calling the postal workers' solidarity strike "insane" and attempting to compel the Swedish postal authority to continue crucial deliveries to Tesla, an effort that was rejected on December 7 by a Swedish court.
Pelle Dragsted, a member of Danish Parliament and a democratic socialist, posted a video on social media telling Musk to accept the lesson he's been given since October: "Get unionized or get out" of Nordic countries.
"In the Nordics, we love our unions, because they make our lives so much better," said Dragsted. "Here in Denmark, our unions have secured a decent living wage for all workers, a workweek of 37 hours, the right to at least five weeks of vacation, paid sick leave, and the right to one year of parental leave... So dear Elon, respect your workers."
In addition to angering unionized workers across Scandinavia, Musk's refusal to abide by the region's strong protections for workers has been trying the patience of powerful investors.
The pension fund PensionDanmark sold more than $70 million in Tesla stock earlier this month, tellingReuters, "In the light of the conflict now spreading to Denmark as well as Tesla's recent very categorical refusal to enter a labor union agreement in any country, we have come to the conclusion that we as investors at present hardly can influence the company."
A coalition of investors that manages $1 trillion in assets—including KLP in Norway, Folksam in Sweden, and PFA in Denmark—also demanded a meeting with Musk to discuss the matter after the new year.
"We as Nordic investors acknowledge the decade-old tradition of collective bargaining, and therefore urge Tesla to reconsider your current approach to unions," said the group.
As Aucante pointed out to France 24, Musk has risked his company's reputation in a region where Teslas are more popular than anywhere else in Europe, suggesting that Tesla will ultimately have to concede to the workers.
"The company has no interest in prolonging a conflict that will severely damage its image," Aucante told the outlet.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular