Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Israel is 8th Happiest Country on the Globe

Want to be happier? Move to Israel.

And no, this isn’t Jewish Agency propaganda. It’s the results of a recently announced Forbes mega-study on happiness around the glob.

Gallup surveyed thousands of people in 155 countries, between 2005 and 2009, to find out how happy they were. It asked participants about overall satisfaction with their lives and how they felt the previous day. Statisticians then crunched the numbers to come up with a percentage of people thriving, struggling and suffering.

Israel ranks a remarkable eighth, with 62% of the population thriving, only 3% suffering and 35% struggling. America only ranks 14th, with 57% of the population thriving, 40% struggling and, like Israel, 3% suffering.

The five happiest countries – Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands – are all clustered in the same, chilled out region. Israel’s high ranking sticks out in the top ten. It’s the only Middle Eastern country and the only country coping with a continuous political and religious conflict.

In Israel’s large immigrant groups, people will be pleased to know that none of them left behind happier countries to make the move. France ranks 44th, Russia 73rd, Yemen 96th, Ethiopia 108th, and Morocco 115th.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.