In 2018, over 62% of people aged 16 and over in the European Union reported being happy all of the time (14%) or most of the time (48%) over the past four weeks, while 12% were rarely (8%) or never happy (2%).
Compared with 2013, the share of happy people in the EU increased by over 2 percentage points (60%).
Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland have the happiest people: over three quarters of people (76% in each country) claimed to feel happy all or most of the time over the last four weeks. The next happiest individuals are in Luxembourg (74% of people), Spain (72%) and Denmark (70%).
In contrast, the frequency of being happy is the lowest in Latvia (where 31% of people reported being happy all or most of the time) and Bulgaria (35%), followed by Croatia (42%), Lithuania (45%), Greece and Romania (both 46%).
Looking at the extremes, Spain recorded the highest share of people that were happy all of the time (29%), while a similar share of people in Latvia (28%) reported being happy rarely or never over the last four weeks.
Note: To measure people’s happiness, respondents were asked to rank their frequency of being happy in the past four weeks on the following scale: ‘all of the time’, ‘most of the time’, ‘some of the time’, ‘a little of the time’ or ‘none of the time’.
For more information:
- Eurostat Statistics Explained article on subjective well-being
- Eurostat News Release on subjective well-being
- Eurostat database on income and living conditions
- The source data can be found in Eurostat dataset ilc_pw08.
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