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• Country ranks 109th in World Happiness Report 2025
• US slumps to 24th, sees rise in ‘despair deaths’
• Report says decline in life satisfaction explains overall rise in anti-system votes
• Trends towards increased loneliness most evident among young people
ISLAMABAD: Are Pakistanis a happy people? Maybe not when compared to the rest of the world, but they are definitely among the happiest of nations in South Asia.
This was revealed in the World Happiness Report 2025, released on Thursday by the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre.
The happiness ranking is based on a three-year average of individuals’ self-assessed evaluations of life satisfaction, as well as GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity and corruption.
While Finland has retained its title as the happiest country for the eighth year in a row, the new report sees the United States plunge to 24th place, its lowest rank ever.
It also noted that the United States was one of few countries to see a rise of so-called “deaths of despair” — from suicide or substance abuse — at a time when those deaths are declining in a majority of countries.
Afghanistan, plagued by a humanitarian catastrophe since the Taliban regained control in 2020, once again ranks as the unhappiest.
The findings of the report are based on Gallup World Poll data and other sources, including the Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll, and analysed by leading experts in wellbeing science.
Countries are ranked according to their self-assessed life evaluations averaged over the years 2022–2024.
Pakistan comes in at 109 among the 147 surveyed countries, and is second only to Nepal (91st) in terms of the happiness quotient in South Asian countries.
India ranks nine rungs below Pakistan at the 118th spot, Sri Lanka is at 133 while Bangladesh comes in at 134.
Costa Rica (6th) and Mexico (10th) have both entered the top 10 for the first time.
But Western industrial countries are now less happy than they were between 2005 and 2010. Fifteen of them have had significant drops, compared to four with significant increases. Like the US, the UK (23rd) also reporting its lowest average life evaluation since the 2017 report.
This year, the authors of the happiness report said new evidence indicates that engaging in acts of generosity and believing in the kindness of others are “significant predictors of happiness, even more so than earning a higher salary”.
They also noted that in general “people are too pessimistic about the kindness of their communities”, and that “the return rate of lost wallets is much higher than people expect”.
The report says the decline in life satisfaction explains an overall rise in anti-system votes, but trust in others comes into play. Among unhappy people attracted by the extremes of the political spectrum, low-trust people are more often found on the far-right, whereas high-trust people are more inclined to vote for the far-left.
Trends towards increased loneliness are most evident among young people. In 2023, 19 per cent of young adults across the world reported having no one they could count on for social support, a 39pc increase compared to 2006.
For most people in the world, family is a source of joy and support, the report noted. Couples who live with at least one child, or couples who live with children and members of their extended family, have especially high average life satisfaction.
People living on their own often experience lower levels of happiness. People in very large households can also experience lower happiness, probably linked to diminished economic satisfaction.
According to the report, an analysis by Pew Research Centre found that the share of the US population in multi-generational households has increased from 7pc in 1971 to 18pc in 2021.
While multi-generation households are extremely common in Asia (more than half in India and Pakistan), as well as several in sub-Saharan Africa, such extended families account for around 30pc of all households in Europe and North America, but are rare in Canada and the UK.
Published in Dawn, March 21st, 2025
