In an increasingly individualistic and divided world, the annual World Happiness Report (WHR) for 2025 looks at how “caring and sharing” attitudes create happier societies. How does Germany compare internationally?
Published annually by Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and the WHR’s Editorial Board, the annual World Happiness Report asks residents in 147 countries to assess how happy they are with their lives.
In this year’s edition, the report centred around the impact of “caring and sharing”, investigating both “the benefits to the recipients of caring behaviour and the benefits to those who care for others”.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, people living in societies where “caring and sharing” is less common, e.g. where wealth inequality is greater, sharing meals is less common, family bonds are weaker or household sizes are typically smaller, said they were less happy.
Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, Norway, Israel, Luxembourg and Mexico were the top 10 countries where residents gave the most positive assessments of their life satisfaction. Germany ranked in 22nd place.
“One of the study’s most significant findings is the importance of social relationships for long-term happiness and health,” the authors wrote. These findings are also supported by previous research cited in the WHR 2025, which used broader population samples, including one carried out in Germany.
Researchers asked participants in Germany how they could improve their life satisfaction and found that those with “socially engaged goals (e.g. “I plan to spend more time with friends and family”) often reported improvements in life satisfaction one year later. In contrast, those who had other goals (e.g. “I plan to find a better job”) did not report increased life satisfaction”.
A common way to spend more daily time with friends and family is by sharing meals. Overall, the WHR 2025 found “a positive relationship between sharing meals and life evaluations”. People in Germany ranked 91st in the world when it comes to the average number of lunches and dinners that people in the federal republic ate with someone they know over the past seven days.
The study also pointed out that those under 35 are the most likely to dine alone and that - similar to findings of the 2024 study, which focused on age and happiness - young people in Western Europe and North America report "the lowest well-being among all age groups”.
The study also argued that the rise of right-wing populism across the world is “largely due to unhappiness” and pessimism about the trustworthiness of others.
In Germany, Spain, France and Sweden, the study found that “far-right voters stand much lower on social trust measures than electors for any other political party”. In contrast, those voting for centre-left parties have above-average life satisfaction and social trust, and those voting far left have lower life satisfaction but high interpersonal trust.
“In the context of post-industrial societies that have become increasingly individualistic,” the study explained. Subjective attitudes - such as happiness and perceived trustworthiness of others - play a “greater role in shaping values and voting behaviour than traditional ideologies or class struggle,” the authors wrote.
For more information and to see where other countries ranked, check out the official website.
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