Israelis are fifth happiest in the world despite ongoing war, report finds

Israel is ranked as the fifth happiest country in the world despite the war in Gaza and the October 7 massacre, according to the 2024 World Happiness Report, released on Wednesday.

The publication ranks happiness on a national level each year. This year, Israel earned the fifth spot out of 143 ranked countries, dropping only one spot from its ranking of fourth happiest last year.

This year’s ranking, as well as in previous years, measured happiness and subjective well-being according to three factors: life evaluation, positive emotions, and negative emotions.

Life evaluations are measured by asking respondents to evaluate their life as a whole using the image of a ladder, with the best possible life for them as a ten and the worst possible as a 0. Each respondent provides a numerical response on this scale, called the Cantril ladder.

Positive and negative emotions are measured by asking individuals yes or no questions about the following indicators: laughter, enjoyment, and interest for the positive and worry, sadness, and anger for the negative.

Israel secured the number five spot behind Finland, Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden.

Other notable rankings from the survey include Iran at number 100 of 143, the “State of Palestine” at 103, Jordan at 125, Egypt at 127, Yemen at 133, Lebanon at 142, and Afghanistan in last place.

A happiness researcher at Bar-Ilan explains the findings.

Happiness policy researcher at the Science, Technology, and Society program at Bar-Ilan University, Anat Fanti, responded to the findings, saying, “Even this year, which was one of the most difficult in the country’s history, Israel ranked in the top five of the International Happiness Index. The reason for this is that life satisfaction, the main index by which happiness is measured, is a stable index over time and refers to the characteristics of the country as a whole.”

“This means factors such as the economy, the degree of social involvement, and the health services in the country affect the ranking more than fleeting feelings. To give a more accurate picture of happiness in all countries, the report’s editors refer to the average life satisfaction in the last three years when calculating the ranking. Therefore, Israel’s ranking in fifth place in the happiness report marks the stability in life satisfaction in Israel over the last few years and not only in, for example, even during the Corona period, which was traumatic all over the world, but it was also still possible to see that the top ten of the global happiness ranking includes more or less the same countries every year.”

She added, “The data analysis shows that if the ranking were based only on this year, Israel would have fallen in the world happiness ranking as required by an event of this magnitude. In addition to life satisfaction, the report examines the level of positive and negative emotions experienced by the population when the survey was conducted.”

“In the index of positive emotions, Israel dropped from 114th place to 123rd place. This is indeed a decrease, but I assume that due to the incredible mobilization of the population, the decrease in positive feelings was less significant than expected. On the other hand, in terms of negative feelings, Israel rose from 119th place to 60th place in the world, which reflects a dramatic increase in the level of negative feelings. If the report data only showed October-November 2023 data, and not a three-year average, our negative sentiment rating would have been even higher as would be expected given the proximity of the sample performance to the events of October 7,” Fanti said.

Sam Halpern contributed to this report.