That’s according to the annual World Happiness Report, published on Wednesday by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford.
The report is based on Gallup World Poll data analyzed by a team of experts. The rankings are largely based on life-satisfaction polls conducted in each country, which represents “subjective well-being.”
Lithuania was ranked 19th on the overall happiness list but secured the top spot in the under-30 rankings. Vilnius, the country’s capital city, has a reputation for being a vibrant location for young workers.
Ricardo Sergio Schmitz, a Brazilian consultant based in Vilnius, previously told Business Insider that young professionals were flocking to the city because of the career opportunities. He said moving to Lithuania allowed young workers to grow and access better positions than they would in their home countries.
On the flip side, America’s youth is struggling.
The US plummeted in the rankings this year, falling from the 15th position in 2023 to 23 in 2024. The country fared even worse in the under-30 category, falling behind Saudi Arabia and Guatemala into 62nd place.
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, a professor and editor of the World Happiness Report, said the US falling out of the top 20 happiest countries was “quite astonishing.”
“The young are the ones that have fallen off a cliff in terms of their well-being, and that’s feeding through into the overall ranking score for the United States,” he told BI.
De Neve said that while happiness in young people had fallen in some regions, it wasn’t a global trend.
“It is really a North American thing and, to a lesser extent, a Western Europe and UK thing,” he said.
Happiness among Finnish youth also dropped comparatively to adults in the country. While the country hung onto its spot at the top of the overall rankings, Finland fell into seventh place for under-30s.
