Canada ranks as the happiest G7 nation in 2025 happiness report.
The nation has performed well in these rankings year-over-year, consistently ranking among the happiest nations in G7 as well as G20.
2025 World Happiness Ranking
Canada came at the 18th position in the global happiness ranking for 2025. The nation saw a minor decline in its ranking from 2024 when it placed 15th globally.
Canada is not alone among the G7 in witnessing a decline in its happiness ranking in the past five years, including the United States of America (ranked 24th this year), & the United Kingdom (ranked 23rd this year). Notably, Germany, which in 2021 was ranked higher than Canada, presently ranks 22nd in terms of global happiness.
Between 2021 and 2024, Canada achieved the following rankings:
| Year | Global Happiness Ranking |
| 2020 | 11 |
| 2021 | 14 |
| 2022 | 15 |
| 2023 | 13 |
| 2024 | 15 |
Finland continues to perform strongly on the World Happiness Ranking, holding first place for the eighth year in a row.
Since the inception of the World Happiness Ranking in 2013, a consistent trend has been the dominance of Scandinavian countries within the top 10 happiness countries. In 2025, six of the ten happiest nations in the world were from this part of the world.
The table below breaks down the ten countries ranked the happiest in 2025, along with their life evaluation score. Take a look!
| Rank | Country | Life Evaluation Score |
| 1 | Finland | 7.736 |
| 2 | Denmark | 7.521 |
| 3 | Iceland | 7.515 |
| 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 |
Methodology
The World Happiness Ranking are based on a comprehensive measurement of subjective well-being, which includes three primary indicators:
- Life evaluation
- Positive emotions
- Negative emotions
Life Evaluations
Canada ranks as the happiest G7 nation in 2025 happiness report. Well, the methodology of the World Happiness Ranking is designed to empower respondents to evaluate their own well-being, emphasizing a bottom-up where individuals provide personal assessments of their lives.
While various life factors are considered to explain differences in life evaluations, some variables like unemployment and inequality are not included because of the lack of comparable data across all nations.
The initial measure used for the rankings is life evaluations, which are considered the most reliable demonstrators of quality of life. For each year’s rankings, scores of life evaluations are averaged over the last three years to ensure consistency.
Data is gathered from the Gallup World Poll, where respondents are asked to evaluate their present life using the Cantril Ladder scale. Respondents rate their lives on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 being the best possible life & 0 being the worst possible.
Aside from Cantril Ladder, life evaluations are also broken down into other measures that tend to be correlated to happiness, like self-reports on perceptions of:
- Social support
- Freedom
- Generosity
- Corruption
Note that the Cantril Ladder allows respondents to self-anchor their well-being based on their unique perspectives. This subjective approach aligns with efforts from organizations like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to measure well-being and develop comprehensive metrics for evaluating national progress.
Around 1,000 responses are typically collected annually per country, and population-representative national averages are calculated for each year. The happiness rankings are based on three-year averages of these life evaluations in order to enhance precision.
Positive And Negative Emotions
The measurement of emotions is divided into two categories, each with three sub-categories:
- Positive Emotions: It includes the average of responses to questions about experiencing laughter, enjoyment, and interest.
- Negative Emotions: It includes the average of responses to questions about experiencing worry, sadness, and anger.
Although these self-reports on emotion contribute to the happiness ranking, life evaluations are preferred for international comparisons because of their stability and ability to capture a broader view of life circumstances.
How Happy Are Newcomers In Canada?
Canada ranks as the happiest G7 nation in 2025 happiness report. Though there is not much research particularly studying newcomer/ immigrant happiness in Canada, the studies that do exist show certain positive trends. In a 2024 study conducted by Pollara Strategic Insight, 79% of the 1,507 newcomers respondents reported feeling ‘overall happiness in Canada.’
Despite this research deficit, there is a rich body of literature studying newcomer self-reports of feelings often associated with happiness as well as well-being.
For example, studies conducted by Statistics Canada reveal that newcomers to the nation generally report a strong sense of belonging to their local communities and to Canada as a whole.
This sense of belonging is often underscored by newcomers’s perception of their quality of life and level of social integration within Canada.
Newcomers’ self-reports in this regard are often stronger than those of the natural-born Canadian population and tend to vary by region.
Sense Of Belonging To Local Communities
A 2022 study into immigrant’s sense of belonging to Canada found that:
- Recent immigrants (those who arrived in the past five years) reported a strong sense of belonging to their local community at a rate of 50%.
- Long-term immigrants (those who arrived more than five years ago) reported a strong sense of belonging at a rate of 48%.
In comparison, Canadian-born individuals reported a strong sense of belonging at a rate of 46%.
Sense Of Belonging To Canada
A 2023 study conducted by Statistics Canada found that the strength of immigrant’s sense of belonging to Canada varies across the country, with notable regional differences:
Immigrants residing in Atlantic Canada as well as Ontario report the strongest sense of belonging to Canada.
On the other hand, immigrants in British Columbia and Alberta report a weaker sense of belonging compared to those in Ontario and Atlantic Canada.
In Alberta, the lower sense of belonging is largely attributed to factors like:
- Sociodemographic characteristics, i.e., years since landing, population group, age, and education
- Perceptions of discrimination
- Structural conditions, including unemployment rates, median income, as well as the size of the immigrant population
If these factors were equalized, immigrants/ newcomers in Alberta would likely report a sense of belonging similar to those in Ontario.
In British Columbia, the difference in sense of belonging is not explained by the similar factors affecting Alberta. Even after accounting for sociodemographic characteristics, discrimination, as well as structural conditions, immigrants/ newcomers in Ontario are more likely to report a very strong sense of belonging to Canada as compared to those in British Columbia.
Despite the regional differences, immigrants in Ontario and the Atlantic provinces consistently report very favorable views about their sense of belonging to Canada. Additionally, immigrants in Ontario are more likely than native-born Canadians to report a strong sense of belonging to Canada.
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