A new survey reveals that Hungarians are much less happy than they were last year
Sadly, a new survey found that Hungarians dropped 13 places on the World Happiness Report 2025 compared to the 2024 annual report. On top of the list are Scandinavian countries like Finland, winning the “competition”, followed by Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden. Hungarians are less happy than Romanians, Serbs, Slovaks, Austrians, and Slovenians but happier than Croats and Ukrainians.
According to 24.hu, Hungary was 56th on the World Happiness Report 2024, but the latest survey revealed that our country dropped to the 69th position, meaning it slipped 13 places in just one year. Based on the findings, Hungarians are less happy than Chinese, Russian or Uzbek people.
The world’s happiest country is Finland for the eighth time, consecutively. The 2025 report ranked countries based on the respondents’ evaluation of the years between 2022 and 2024. According to the document, “The Gallup World Poll, which remains the principal source of data in this report, asks respondents to evaluate their current life as a whole using the image of a ladder, with the best possible life for them as a 10 and the worst possible as a 0. Each respondent provides a numerical response on this scale, referred to as the Cantril Ladder.
Typically, around 1,000 responses are gathered annually for each country. Weights are used to construct population-representative national averages for each year in each country. We base our happiness ranking on a three-year average of these life evaluations since the larger sample size enables more precise estimates.”
Additionally, there are more factors they consider e.g. GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and corruption.
Hungarians are less happy than the Chinese but happier than Croatian people
We wrote HERE that a Hungarian region struggles with Europe’s lowest life expectancy at birth. In the Northern Hungarian NUTS-2 region, the life expectancy at birth is only 74.9 years, which is the same as that of Mayotte’s, one of the overseas departments of France, located in the northern part of the Mozambique Channel, between the island of Madagascar and northeastern Mozambique on the African continent. Thus, it is not surprising Hungary dropped in this year’s survey.
In Europe, the Netherlands, Norway and Luxembourg are among the 10 happiest countries in the world. Interestingly, Mexico is also among them.
In our region, Central Europe, Austria (17), Slovenia (19) and Czechia (20) are the happiest countries. Among our neighbours, Serbia is 31st, Romania is 35th, while Slovakia obtained the 50th position. Croatia is only 72nd, while Ukraine finished in the 111th place.
Read also:
- Shocking truth revealed: Why Hungarians have shorter retirement lives – read more HERE
- Startling survey: Hungarian youth’s growing discontent with the EU