The world experienced a “benevolence bump” of kindness during the Covid-19 pandemic that has remained, with generous acts more than 10% above pre-pandemic levels.
The annual World Happiness Report found that in 2024, acts such as donating and volunteering were more frequent than in 2017–19 in all generations and almost all global regions, although they had fallen from 2023.
Helping strangers was still up by an average of 18% from the pre-pandemic era.
Prof Lara Aknin, a Canadian professor of social psychology and one of the report’s editors, said the number of people who reported helping strangers sharply increased in 2020 and the numbers had been sustained.
She said: “I think many people have an interest in helping others, but sometimes shy away; they don’t want to overstep their welcome. The Covid-19 pandemic made it abundantly clear that many of us need help from our neighbours and friends.
“So maybe people felt a greater sense of obligation and lower levels of inhibition knowing their help would be welcomed.”
She said data in the coming years would help reveal whether the benevolence trend was here to stay. “One perhaps really optimistic possibility is that we’ve now opened our eyes to the needs of other people and the emotional rewards we get from helping other people, and that could fuel this positive spiral between helping others and wellbeing,” she said.
The report said researchers were “struck by the longevity of the increases [in benevolence] appearing first in 2020”, and the “size and persistence of the post-Covid increases in benevolent acts” meant that even in 2024, four years after the onset of Covid, they were still 10% higher.
The World Happiness Report is an annual barometer of wellbeing across more than 140 nations coordinated by the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, the analytics company Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
This year’s edition emphasised people’s tendency to be too pessimistic about the kindness of others. A study across 40 countries on how often dropped wallets were returned found the rate was twice as high as people expected – and wallets were more likely to be returned if they contained money.
John F Helliwell, an economist at the University of British Columbia and a founding editor of the World Happiness Report, said the data from the wallet study “confirms that people are much happier living where they think people care about each other”.
The report also found that sharing meals with others was strongly linked with positive wellbeing across all global regions, and that those who shared more meals with others reported significantly higher levels of life satisfaction and social support.
But dining alone is becoming more prevalent, especially among young people, and in the US there has been a 53% increase in people dining alone since 2003 – one reason why the country has fallen in the happiness rankings.
The report’s annual happiness rankings was led by Nordic countries, with Finland coming first out of 147 ranked nations for the eighth year in a row, while Costa Rica and Mexico, in sixth and 10th places respectively, entered the top 10 for the first time.
The US fell to its lowest-ever position in 24th place, closely following the UK in 23rd place – it’s lowest placing since the 2017 report.
Switzerland, Canada and Australia were all pushed out of the top 10, and this years’ rankings mark the first time “none of the large industrial powers ranked in the top 20”.
The report concludes: “In general, the western industrial countries are now less happy than they were between 2005 and 2010.” It added that a decline in happiness and social trust in Europe and the US had partly led to a rise in political polarisation and anti-system votes.
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, the director of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre and an editor of the World Happiness Report, said: “This year’s report pushes us to look beyond traditional determinants like health and wealth.
“It turns out that sharing meals and trusting others are even stronger predictors of wellbeing than expected. In this era of social isolation and political polarisation we need to find ways to bring people around the table again – doing so is critical for our individual and collective wellbeing.”
