Philippines ranks 4th ‘happiest’ in SEA – report

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines ranked fourth among Southeast Asian countries and 56th worldwide in the 2026 World Happiness Report, showing a slight improvement from last year.

Published by the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Center, the latest report placed the Philippines 56th out of 147 countries – one spot higher than its 57th ranking in 2025.

Despite the improvement, the country remained behind Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand in the region. It had ranked second in Southeast Asia in the 2024 report.

The World Happiness Report ranks countries based on three-year data from the Gallup World Poll. It was published in partnership with the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

The poll asked respondents to evaluate their current life as a whole from a score of 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest.

The Philippines scored an average of 6.206 from 2022 to 2025, up from 6.107 for the 2021 to 2024 period.

While rankings are primarily based on respondents’ life evaluations, the report also assessed six key factors that help explain happiness levels.

Among these, the Philippines performed best in freedom, ranking 13th (up from 19th), followed by social support at 63rd (from 68th), generosity at 81st (from 91st), gross domestic product per capita at 88th (from 89th) and healthy life expectancy at 93rd (unchanged).

However, its ranking in perceptions of corruption fell to 96th from 78th.

“The six factors reflect what’s been broadly found in the research literature to explain national-level differences in life evaluations,” the report’s methodology read.

“Some important variables, such as unemployment or inequality, do not appear because comparable international data are not yet available for the full sample of countries. However, our research has shown that wellbeing inequality affects average life evaluations more than income inequality,” it added.

The report also noted a decline in positive emotions among Filipinos, dropping from 82.1 percent to 76.9 percent. Meanwhile, those reporting negative emotions remained nearly unchanged, from 34.6 percent to 34.1 percent.

Like last year, Finland topped the list with a score of 7.764, followed by Iceland (7.540), Denmark (7.539), Costa Rica (7.439), Sweden (7.255), Norway (7.242), Netherlands (7.223), Israel (7.187), Luxembourg (7.063) and Switzerland (7.018).

At the bottom of the list were Afghanistan (1.446), Sierra Leone (3.251), Malawi (3.284), Zimbabwe (3.346), Botswana (3.464), Yemen (3.532), Lebanon (3.723), Democratic Republic of Congo (3.761), Egypt (3.862) and Tanzania (3.902).

In Southeast Asia, Singapore retained the top spot with a score of 6.585 (36th worldwide), followed by Vietnam (6.428, 45th) and Thailand (6.296, 52nd).

The Philippines was followed by Malaysia (6.005, 71st), Indonesia (5.617, 87th), Laos (5.515, 92nd), Cambodia (4.462, 121st) and Myanmar (4.287, 129th).

Timor-Leste, the newest member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, was not included in the report.