The 2024 edition of the World Happiness Report was released on March 20, and Finland tops the overall list again for the seventh successive year. Meanwhile, Romania landed in 32nd place, down from 24th in 2023.

Experts used responses from people in more than 140 nations to rank the world’s ‘happiest’ countries. Finland topped the list again, followed by Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and Israel. 

“Significantly, the United States of America (23rd) has fallen out of the top 20 for the first time since the World Happiness Report was first published in 2012, driven by a large drop in the wellbeing of Americans under 30. Afghanistan remains bottom of the overall rankings as the world’s ‘unhappiest’ nation,” reads the press release.

Romania is at number 32 in the overall ranking, from 24th in last year’s report. 

When looking at the separate rankings by age group - a novelty in this year’s edition - the gap in Romania between the rankings for the young and those for the old is among the biggest. The country ranks 8th on the list for children and young people under 30 but only 48th when it comes to those aged 60 and older.

“There are many more countries where the rankings for the young are more than 40 places higher than for the old, mainly in Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America. The biggest gap is in Croatia, where the ranking for the young is 66 places higher than for the old. There are gaps of 50 or more places for Bulgaria, Moldova, and Serbia, and between 40 and 50 places in Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Paraguay,” reads the 2024 report.

The World Happiness Report is a partnership of Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and the WHR’s Editorial Board. The complete 2024 report is available here.

irina.marica@romania-insider.com

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