Misc

Mapped: Happiness Levels Across East Asia and Oceania

Published

1 month ago

April 4, 2025

Kayla Zhu

Article/Editing:

Niccolo Conte

Graphics/Design:

Sabrina Lam

See this visualization first on the Voronoi app.

Which East Asian and Oceanic Countries are the Happiest?

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Oceania continues to lead in happiness, with Australia and New Zealand ranking among the world’s happiest nations. Meanwhile, across East, Southeast, and South Asia, happiness levels vary widely.

This map showcases the findings for countries in East, Southeast, and South Asia and Oceania from the 2025 World Happiness Report, an annual publication that measures global contentment based on life evaluations, social support, freedom of choice, GDP per capita, and additional indicators of well-being. The data is drawn from the Gallup World Poll and various supplementary sources.

Each nation’s score in the World Happiness Report reflects an average of life evaluations over a three-year span (2022–2024 for this edition), ranking countries from highest to lowest. A more detailed explanation of the report’s methodology can be found at the end of this article.

The Most and Least Happy Countries in East Asia and Oceania 2025

Below, we show the happiness scores of East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian and Oceania countries from the World Happiness Report 2025.

Rank	Country Name	Region	Average Happiness Score (2022-2024)
11	🇦🇺 Australia	Oceania	7.0
12	🇳🇿 New Zealand	Oceania	7.0
27	🇹🇼 Taiwan	Asia	6.7
34	🇸🇬 Singapore	Asia	6.6
46	🇻🇳 Vietnam	Asia	6.4
49	🇹🇭 Thailand	Asia	6.2
55	🇯🇵 Japan	Asia	6.1
57	🇵🇭 Philippines	Asia	6.1
58	🇰🇷 South Korea	Asia	6.0
64	🇲🇾 Malaysia	Asia	6.0
68	🇨🇳 China	Asia	5.9
77	🇲🇳 Mongolia	Asia	5.8
83	🇮🇩 Indonesia	Asia	5.6
88	🇭🇰 Hong Kong	Asia	5.5
92	🇳🇵 Nepal	Asia	5.3
93	🇱🇦 Laos	Asia	5.3
118	🇮🇳 India	Asia	4.4
124	🇰🇭 Cambodia	Asia	4.3
126	🇲🇲 Myanmar	Asia	4.3
133	🇱🇰 Sri Lanka	Asia	3.9
134	🇧🇩 Bangladesh	Asia	3.9

Taiwan took the title of East Asia’s happiest country this year, surpassing Singapore which held the title in 2023 and 2024. These two countries have alternated over the past 10 years as the region’s happiest country.

Both Taiwan and Singapore enjoy high standards of living, strong healthcare systems, and robust economies, contributing to their consistently high happiness scores.

Taiwan is also one of Asia’s top 10 economies despite having a comparatively small population, largely due to their dominant semiconductor industry.

On the other end, Bangladesh continues to be the region’s unhappiest country in recent years. Dhaka, the capital and largest city of Bangladesh has consistently ranked among the least livable cities in the world

Australia and New Zealand continue to have relatively high overall happiness scores, ranking 11th and 12th respectively. Both Sydney, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand ranked in the top 10 most livable cities in 2024, according to The Economist.

Where does this data come from?

Source: The World Happiness Report which leverages data from the Gallup World Poll.

Methodology: The World Happiness Report derives its rankings from Gallup World Poll data, surveying approximately 1,000 people per country per year across 140+ countries. The total sample size typically exceeds 140,000 respondents annually. The rankings are based on three-year averages, from 2022 to 2024. Respondents evaluate their lives using the Cantril Ladder, a 0-to-10 scale. The rankings are based on six key factors: GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom to make life choices, generosity (measured by charitable acts), and perceptions of corruption. In addition to life evaluations, the report examines emotional well-being through positive and negative affect indicators, such as laughter, worry, and sadness. The 2025 edition also emphasizes social trust and benevolence, analyzing behaviors like sharing meals, helping strangers, and returning lost wallets to assess how caring and community engagement contribute to happiness.

Criticisms: Critics of the World Happiness Report point out that survey questions measure satisfaction with socioeconomic conditions as opposed to individual emotional happiness. As well, there are myriad cultural differences around the world that influence how people think about happiness and life satisfaction. Finally, there can be big differences in life satisfaction between groups within a country, which are averaged out even in a nationally representative group. The report does acknowledge inequality as a factor by measuring the “gap” between the most and least happy halves of each country.