The United States has a happiness problem.
In the World Happiness Report’s annual ranking of the happiest countries, the U.S. dropped to no.24, its lowest position in the list’s 13-year history. Last year, the U.S. dropped out of the top 20 for the first time. The list is compiled from analysis of how a representative sample of residents from over 140 countries rate their quality of life.
“That gradual decline in well-being in the United States is, if you start digging into it, especially driven by people that are below 30,” Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, professor of economics at the University of Oxford, leader of the Wellbeing Research Center and editor of The World Happiness Report, tells Fortune. “Life satisfaction of young people in the U.S. has declined.”
If you were only to assess those below 30, the U.S. wouldn’t even rank in the top 60 happiest countries, the report finds. It’s the same reason for the U.S.’s dramatic drop last year from no.15 to no.23. But the continuous decline is concerning, researchers note.
“It is really disheartening to see this, and it links perfectly with the fact that it’s the well-being of youth in America that’s off a cliff, which is driving the drop in the rankings to a large extent,” De Neve says.
The U.S.’s ranking is also explained by larger inequality compared to the Nordic countries, like Finland (no.1), Denmark (no.2), and Iceland (no.3).
“In these Nordic Scandinavian countries, a rising tide lifts all boats, so the levels of economic inequality are much less, and that reflects in well-being as well,” De Neve says. “In Finland, most people will rate [their happiness] as seven or an eight, whereas if you look at the distribution of well-being in the States, there’s a lot of 10s out there, but there’s a lot of ones as well.”
The report focused more this year on the strength of a country’s social support and how much people trust in others—a key predictor of personal well-being. In 2023, nearly one in five young adults in the U.S. said they had no one they could count on for support. And in the U.S., the number of people dining alone has increased by 53% since 2003 (the number of shared meals across a week was a new data point in this year’s report that correlated to positive well-being, according to De Neve).
“You see an extraordinary increase in dining alone over the past two decades in the U.S.,” he says, which exacerbates people’s distrust in others and in society. “It’s the fact that people are increasingly on their own, isolated, their political thinking, their theories around life and society, are no longer tested by others … In our echo chambers, we develop these notions that others are to be distrusted, and we mistrust others, and migrants eat cats and dogs, all that kind of stuff. And as a result, we start believing these things. And the way we’ve picked up on that is really acute.”
The researchers say they were able to pick up on the distrust by asking whether or not people believed someone would return a lost wallet. Compared to the Nordic countries, people in the U.S. were more likely to underestimate the kindness of others.
“It requires that strangers are to be trusted, that they will go beyond the call of duty and be kind and try and get it back to the rightful owner, or drop it with the police, which means you need to trust the police,” De Neve says. “That single item of the wallet drop is very powerful.”
For more on happiness:
- Researchers have followed over 700 people since 1938 to find the keys to happiness. Here’s what they discovered
- Americans are proof that money can’t buy happiness, new report shows
- You can learn to be happier. This class can teach you how in just 1 week
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
