KarunaNews Story

According to the World Happiness Report 2025, how benevolent our society is—and how benevolent we think our society is—matters for everyone’s well-being. The World Happiness Report draws from the annual Gallup World Poll, which surveys around 1,000 people per country. The happiest countries are ranked according to residents’ average life satisfaction. The happiest countries were Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and the Netherlands. This year’s report also ranked countries on how many people gave money to charity, volunteered, or helped a stranger in the last month and on people’s predictions (from 2019) whether a wallet they lost would be returned by a neighbor, a stranger, or a police officer. This year’s report finds that countries where more people donate, volunteer, and help strangers are happier countries and that when people see others as fair and helpful, they’re more resilient to stressors.