Data extracted in December 2025
Planned update: December 2026
Highlights
Overall life satisfaction, 2024
This article is part of the Eurostat online publication Quality of life indicators, providing statistics on the quality of life in the EU. It focuses on overall experience of life, the last dimension of the '8+1' quality of life indicators framework. The first eight quality of life dimensions focus on various individual aspects such as material living conditions and living environment or employment, which are often analysed from both an objective and a subjective perspective. This article aims to capture the trends in the subjective well-being based on the ‘life satisfaction’ indicator (self-assessed on a 0-10 scale) collected as part of the statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC).
EU citizens were generally satisfied with their lives in 2024
In 2024, EU residents expressed an average life satisfaction rating of 7.2 out of 10. Finland had the highest rating at 7.8, followed by Romania and Slovenia both at 7.7, while Bulgaria had the lowest rating at 6.2, with Greece at 6.7 and Latvia at 6.9.
All EU countries had average life satisfaction scores above 6, indicating respondents being more satisfied than dissatisfied (see Map 1).
The level of satisfaction may be influenced by many factors such as age, level of education, family and financial situation. Some of these factors are analysed below.
Young people in the EU were more satisfied with their lives
In 2024, at EU level, people aged 16-29 reported higher life satisfaction than those in other age groups, although this pattern varied by country.
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In most EU countries, life satisfaction levels decreased with age in 2024. However, people aged 25-64 and those over 65 had similar life satisfaction levels on average; the difference between these groups was smaller than that between either group and the 16-29 age group. The most significant differences between young (16-29) and older (65+) age groups were in Croatia (2.6 points) and Lithuania (2.2).
In 11 EU countries (Slovakia, Poland, France, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, Ireland, Luxembourg, Finland, the Netherlands and Denmark), the middle age group (25-64) had the lowest average life satisfaction (see Figure 1). In Denmark, Finland and Netherlands, those over 65 reported the highest life satisfaction.
Life satisfaction increased with level of education
At both EU and national levels, life satisfaction increases with educational attainment.
Among those with less than secondary education, average satisfaction ranged from 5.6 in Bulgaria to 7.7 in Finland. Those with secondary education were least satisfied in Bulgaria (6.2) and most satisfied in Romania (7.8). People with tertiary education rated their life satisfaction ranging from a low of 6.8 in Bulgaria to 8.4 in Romania. The largest gap in satisfaction between those with less than secondary education and those with tertiary education was observed in Slovakia (a 1.4-point difference) and Greece, Croatia and Hungary (all 1.3) (see Figure 2).
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Other factors: income, household type, sex and level of urbanisation
Individuals with a higher income and those living in a household with children rate their life satisfaction higher
Figure 3 shows that life satisfaction at EU level mainly varied according to household composition and income level.
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Source: Eurostat (ilc_pw01) Source: Eurostat (ilc_pw02)
Households with dependent children consistently reported the highest levels of life satisfaction among different household types. At the EU level in 2024, this was 7.4, compared with 7.3 for 2 adults living together, 7.2 for households with 3 or more adults without dependent children, and 6.8 for single-person households. The proportion of EU residents living in a single-person household is increasing (see Young people - family and society). The fact that households with dependent children were more satisfied than those without, is rather specific to the European context, as research on other continents has often found the opposite.
Very little difference (0.1 points) was found in the average life satisfaction of people by sex.
People in the highest income quintile rated their their life satisfaction higher than those with the lowest earnings (7.8 compared with 6.6). But even most people in the lowest income quintile rated their life of satisfaction on average above 6, meaning they were more satisfied than dissatisfied. The relationship between income quintile and life satisfaction seems to have remained constant over the past decade.
At the EU average level, there was no difference in life satisfaction between people in urban and rural areas, although country-level differences exist: in some EU countries, urban residents are more satisfied, while in others, rural residents report higher satisfaction.
Source data for tables and graphs
Data sources
The data in this article come primarily from the EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC), which measures income, living conditions and various aspects of quality of life in the EU at both individual and household levels.
A subjective assessment of well-being comprises 3 distinct but complementary aspects:
- life satisfaction (or life evaluation) – an overall assessment of one’s life;
- affect – the presence of positive feelings such as joy and the absence of negative feelings like sadness or anger;
- eudaimonia – the sense that one’s life has meaning and purpose, as defined in the OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being.
The life satisfaction indicator used in this article is collected annually in the EU-SILC core survey. Indicators related to affect are collected through a special ad hoc well-being module every 6 years. Data on eudaimonia were collected only once, in the 2013 ad hoc module, and have not been repeated since.
This article focuses exclusively on the ‘life satisfaction’ indicator.
Context
Measuring well-being has an inherent appeal: promoting the well-being of people in Europe is one of the EU’s principal aims, as set out by the Treaty on European Union.
Measuring subjective well-being produces valuable insights into the role of objective capabilities in well-being levels. Social structures, norms and cultural backgrounds shape differing priorities and values, and these vary between countries. Consequently, the importance individuals assign to each objective dimension of quality of life may differ based on their country of residence.
Rating life satisfaction involves cognitive and evaluative reflection on past and present experiences, providing a more stable perspective. However, this comprehensive outlook complicates statistical measurement of life satisfaction: for respondents to deliver an unbiased overall evaluation of their life, they must exert conscious effort, and the outcome may depend on the timing and circumstances.
Temporary experiences, such weather conditions, could influence assessments, as could the time of day and the day of the week when the assessments occur. These effects should balance out in a large sample.
The metric’s entirely subjective nature presents an additional methodological challenge: in other aspects of quality of life, which focus on functional capabilities, assessments based on perceptions can often be verified against objective measures. However, life satisfaction lacks such an objectively measurable counterpart. Nevertheless, it remains a measure that is easily understood and communicated.
Footnotes
Explore further
Other articles
Database
- Quality of life, see:
- Material living conditions (qol_mlc)
- Productive or other main activity (qol_act)
- Health (qol_hlt)
- Education (qol_edu)
- Leisure and social interactions (qol_lei)
- Economic security and physical safety (qol_saf)
- Governance and basic rights (qol_gov)
- Natural and living environment (qol_env)
- Overall experience of life (qol_lif)