Self-reported Happiness: an Interactive Data Story from Our World in Data
This dataset gives the average answer to the Cantril ladder question: imagine a ladder from 0, the worst possible life, to 10, the best possible life; where do you stand today? It is the headline measure of the World Happiness Report, based on Gallup World Poll surveys.
On this page the dataset is downloaded live from Our World in Data, straight into your browser, and turned into an interactive dashboard and a data story told as a quiz. Nothing is uploaded to a server and nothing needs installing.
Interactive dashboard and data story
At a glance
| Indicator | Self-reported Happiness |
| Unit | 0–10 |
| Coverage | yearly values from 2011 to the latest release |
| Highlighted entities | Finland, Denmark, United States, India, Afghanistan |
| OWID chart id | happiness-cantril-ladder |
| Column | cantril_ladder_score |
| Story format | Quiz |
| Source | Our World in Data, CC BY 4.0 |
Why this dataset is told as a quiz
“Guess the happiest country”: the data is intuitive and has too few years for a trend, so a quiz that asks the reader to guess first fits it best.
Each finding is a question with its answer blurred. Guess, press Reveal, and the chart lights up the points the answer names. Datastripes can tell any dataset in eight formats: scrolling article, slide deck, conversation, newspaper front page, timeline, tap-through stories, quiz and bento grid. In automatic mode it picks one from the shape of the data. Here the format is fixed to the one that fits this indicator best. You can see every format side by side in the data story gallery.
Background
The Nordic countries top the ranking year after year, with Finland first since 2018. They combine high incomes with strong social support, trust in institutions and low corruption, all factors that correlate with life satisfaction.
At the other end, Afghanistan has recorded the lowest scores ever measured, falling sharply after 2017. The United States has slipped down the ranking over the last decade, especially among younger people.
How the indicator is measured
Each country score is the average of about 1,000 survey responses per year, pooled over three years to reduce noise. Because the sample is small, differences of a few tenths of a point between neighbouring countries are not statistically meaningful.
What to look for in the data
- Finland and Denmark score above 7.5, consistently near the top.
- Afghanistan’s score has fallen to below 2, the lowest in the survey’s history.
- The US score has drifted downwards over the period.
- India’s score is below the world median and has fluctuated over the period.
Limits and caveats
- Answers depend on culture and on how the question is translated, so cross-country comparisons need care.
- Three-year averages smooth sudden changes; year-on-year moves are small and noisy.
- Surveys miss some groups, for example people in institutions or in remote, unsafe regions.
Who uses self-reported happiness data
- Wellbeing and social policy researchers
- HR and employee experience teams
- Journalists covering the World Happiness Report
- Psychology and sociology students
How to analyze this dataset yourself
- Open the data. Download the CSV from the Our World in Data chart and drop it into Datastripes. It loads in your browser, with no upload.
- Filter the entities. The file has one row per country and year. Filter the
entitycolumn to the countries or regions you care about, or usecode(for examplecantril_ladder_score) to pick out aggregates. - Pick a time window. Sort or filter on the time column to isolate a period, such as the years before and after a policy change.
- Join other indicators. Add a second OWID file, for example GDP or population, and join it on entity and year to look for relations.
- Forecast and simulate. Run a no-code forecast on any series, or build what-if scenarios on top of it.
- Publish a story. Turn your filtered table into a data story in any of the eight formats and embed it on your site with the Datastripes dashboard widget.
Related data stories
- Global Population: bento grid
- Urbanization Rates: scrolling article
- Global Literacy Rates: app
- Human Development Index: bento grid
- All data stories in the gallery
Frequently asked questions
What is the Cantril ladder?
A survey question asking people to rate their life on a ladder from 0 (worst possible) to 10 (best possible).
Why is Finland always first?
High income, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity and low corruption all score high there; these factors explain most of the gap between countries.
Does money buy happiness?
Richer countries do score higher on average, but the relationship flattens and many other factors matter. You can test it in Datastripes by joining this data with GDP per capita.
Data: Our World in Data, published under CC BY 4.0, downloaded in your browser when you open this page. Datastripes is not affiliated with Our World in Data. Visualisations are generated automatically and may lag behind the latest OWID release by a few days.