2025 World Happiness Report: Summary with Focus on Costa Rica

The 2025 World Happiness Report continues its tradition of ranking countries based on how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be. This year's report maintains a strong focus on "caring and sharing" as central themes, building on previous findings about benevolence during and after the COVID-19 pandemic - and Costa Rica came in 6th and was the top country in the world outside of Scandinavia.

The report uses data from the Gallup World Poll, measuring happiness through self-assessed life evaluations on the Cantril Ladder scale (0-10), where respondents rate their current lives against the best and worst possible lives they can imagine. The rankings are based on three-year averages (2022-2024) to ensure more precise estimates.

Key Findings

Global Rankings

Nordic countries continue their dominance at the top of the happiness rankings:

1. Finland (7.736)
2. Denmark (7.521)
3. Iceland (7.315)
4. Sweden (7.345)
5. Netherlands (7.306)
6. Costa Rica (7.274)
7. Norway (7.262)
8. Israel (7.234)
9. Luxembourg (7.122)
10. Mexico (6.979)

This represents some consistency with previous reports but also some notable shifts. Since the first rankings in 2013, the Nordic countries as a group have improved their positions in the top ten, with their average rank rising from 4.8 in 2013 to 3.4 in 2025. This improvement is primarily driven by Finland (moving from 7th to 1st) and Iceland (from 9th to 3rd).

The report highlights that for the first time, none of the large industrial powers ranked in the top 20. Several Western industrial nations that previously ranked highly have seen significant drops, including Switzerland (from 3rd in 2013, 1st in 2015, to 13th in 2025), Canada (from 6th in 2013 to 18th in 2025), and Australia (from 10th in 2013 to 11th in 2025).

From the World Happiness Report

Focus on Costa Rica

Costa Rica stands out this year as an exceptional case in the happiness rankings, placing 6th globally with a score of 7.274. This makes it the highest-ranked country in Latin America and the only non-European nation in the top seven.

Costa Rica's Unique Position

Costa Rica's consistently high ranking is particularly noteworthy given its relatively lower GDP compared to other top-ranked nations. This exemplifies the report's core finding that happiness is determined by multiple factors beyond economic prosperity.

The country's high ranking can be attributed to several key factors:

1. Strong Social Support: Costa Rica demonstrates robust social networks and community bonds, contributing significantly to its happiness score.
2. Freedom to Make Life Choices: As shown in the color-coded segments of the country bars in Figure 2.1, Costa Rica scores well on perceived freedom to make key life decisions.
3. Healthy Life Expectancy: Despite having a lower GDP than many Western industrial nations, Costa Rica maintains a relatively high healthy life expectancy, contributing positively to overall happiness.
4. Low Corruption Perception: Costa Ricans report relatively favorable perceptions regarding corruption in government and business compared to many other Latin American countries.
5. Regional Context: Costa Rica's success stands in contrast to trends in many Western industrial countries, which have experienced declining happiness scores since the 2005-2010 period. Fifteen Western countries showed significant drops in happiness, while only four showed significant increases.

Benevolence and Kindness

A central theme of the 2025 report is the relationship between happiness and benevolence. Key insights include:

• The COVID-era surge in benevolent acts (donating, volunteering, and helping strangers) declined significantly in 2024 but remains more than 10% higher than pre-pandemic (2017-19) levels globally.
• Helping strangers remains significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels in all regions, with a global average increase of 18%.
• Expecting kindness from others is a stronger predictor of happiness than major actual or expected harms.
• People generally underestimate the kindness of their communities, with actual rates of lost wallet returns being much higher than expected, especially in Nordic countries.

Inequality and International Support

The report notes that happiness inequality within countries has increased by about one-quarter over the past two decades, while happiness inequality between countries has remained roughly constant. Living in societies perceived to be benevolent helps mitigate the harmful effects of unfortunate circumstances, thereby reducing wellbeing inequality.

On international caring and sharing, countries that provide more untied official development assistance (ODA) tend to be happier, while countries with high refugee population shares tend to be less happy, as refugee flows are often based on location rather than invitation.

Latin American Representation

Costa Rica's position is complemented by Mexico's strong showing at 10th place (6.979), making Latin America well-represented in the top ten. The report also notes that Latin American countries dominate the rankings for positive emotions, with six Latin American nations in the top ten for this measure.

Broader Implications

The 2025 World Happiness Report continues to underscore that societal wellbeing depends on multiple factors beyond material wealth. The social context—particularly trust, benevolence, and freedom—plays a crucial role in determining national happiness levels.

Costa Rica exemplifies how middle-income countries can achieve high happiness levels through strong social bonds, healthy institutions, and supportive communities. Its consistent presence among the world's happiest countries challenges purely economic approaches to wellbeing and offers important lessons for policy makers worldwide.

The report also highlights growing happiness inequality within countries while showing that benevolent social environments can mitigate these disparities—a finding particularly relevant as nations navigate post-pandemic recovery and ongoing global challenges.