America's happiness crisis is a generational divide

The American people are very unhappy. The Age of Trump and the rise of authoritarian populism in the MAGA movement are both the symptom and the cause of this collective unhappiness. The unhappiness and rage that the American people feel toward the system and the elites put Trump back in power.

However, America is not unique in this regard. The authoritarian populist movement is global. 

The 2025 World Happiness Report from the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, in conjunction with Gallup, details the deep levels of unhappiness Americans are experiencing. The United States now ranks 24th in the world for happiness, a new low for the country. Finland is ranked as the happiest country in the world.

This year’s report provides the following insights about the connections between unhappiness and America’s democracy crisis:

The sharp drop in social trust in the US is consistent with the fact that rising unhappiness has shifted voters almost exclusively towards the populist right (Donald Trump), and not towards the left (Bernie Sanders). The relative decline or stability in social trust in Europe is consistent with the fact that the decline in life satisfaction has split the unsatisfied electorate between the two opposite extremes of the political spectrum, depending on their level of social trust. …

In Europe, citizens with low life satisfaction and low social trust, the ‘anomics’, tend to vote for far-right parties. In the context of the US two-party system, they tend to abstain and withdraw from public life.

The fall in life satisfaction cannot be explained by economic growth, at least not by average national income, as GDP per capita has been on the rise in the US and Western Europe since the mid-2000s. Rather, it could be blamed on the feelings of financial insecurity and loneliness experienced by Americans and Europeans – two symptoms of a damaged social fabric. It is driven by almost all social categories, but in particular, by the rural, the less-educated, and, quite strikingly, by the younger generation. This low level of life satisfaction is a breeding ground for populism and the lack of social trust is behind the political success of the far right.

America’s young people are in a state of despair. If Americans 29 years old and younger were their own country, they would rank 62nd in the world for happiness. The 2025 World Happiness Report explains:

Young adults across the globe face increasing mental health challenges. Once considered one of the happiest phases of life, young adulthood has taken a troubling turn. Young people in North America and Western Europe now report the lowest wellbeing among all age groups. In fact, World Happiness Report 2024 found that the fall in the United States’ happiness ranking was largely due to a precipitous decline in wellbeing among Americans under 30….

Despite the overall trend that young adults report higher social connection than older adults, countries vary on the age-related differences in the quantity of social connection. For example, this pattern is flipped in the United States, Japan, and Australia, where young adults report the lowest social connection among all age groups. In the United States, 18% of young adults (aged 18–29) reported not having anyone that they feel close to, whereas 15% of adults aged 30–44 reported no social connection.

Unlike other nations, young adults in the US also report lower quality of connection than other age groups. Mirroring these patterns, World Happiness Report 2024 also highlighted a decline in the US happiness ranking, largely driven by a drop in wellbeing in the young adult age group. Although not definitive, this provides intriguing preliminary evidence that relatively low connection among young people might factor into low wellbeing among young Americans.

This finding from the 2025 World Happiness Report suggests that a radical intervention is needed to salvage the future of American democracy and society if these trends continue.

In all, America’s democracy crisis and the rise of authoritarian populism and neofascism are much more than “just” an existential political challenge. It is an emotional, spiritual, intellectual, psychological and a larger crisis of meaning for Americans both as individuals and as a people.

I recently spoke with Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, the Director of the Wellbeing Research Centre and Professor of Economics and Behavioural Science at the Saïd Business School at Oxford. Jan-Emmanuel De Neve is also Editor of the World Happiness Report and the co-founder of the World Wellbeing Movement, a coalition of exemplary corporations that help put wellbeing metrics at the heart of business and public policy. He warns that America’s young people are experiencing the equivalent of a midlife crisis and that this will likely mean diminished incomes and wealth, lower social mobility and a lack of overall happiness and sense of well-being as they age, which will potentially cause serious harm to American society in the future.

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve also provides some hope in this global era of crisis, great anxiety and dread. He explains that the 2025 World Happiness Survey shows that people across the world are generally much kinder and caring than is commonly believed.

Given all the things happening in this very tumultuous and perilous time, how are you feeling? How are you trying to make sense of this all?

When you ask me, “How am I feeling?” I immediately think about this on a scale from 1 to 10. At this moment, I would probably say 9. That is the scale we use in the World Happiness Report. But that is a snapshot in time. Yesterday, I would have told you I am feeling like I am a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10. So, when you ask, “How are you feeling?” I'm giving you an emotional state that is very positive right now. But if you're asking me, how satisfied am I with my life, then that is a different question about a type of happiness and perspective that is more stable. I'm obviously worried about the state of the world, but right now, at this very moment, I am sitting in a beautiful park and enjoying it.

In the same society that is experiencing the same great stress, some people are happy and others in the same immediate community and population are unhappy. What do we know about these divergent experiences among people in the same group? 

There is population-level happiness, which means a larger group, community or even a nation. Within that group, we are asking why some individuals and groups are happier than others. This is the science of well-being. What explains these differences? In certain cases, people will be similar in terms of income and health and where they live but be very different in terms of how they feel about their lives. That is where we dig deeper and the explanations for the differences in self-reported happiness may be mental health, personality traits, genetic predispositions, etc. Certain people, because of their predispositions, tend to see the glass as being half full or half empty to begin with. For example, there have been studies of twins where about a third of the variance in the response to the question “How sad are you with your life" or "how happy are you with it right now" is driven by genetic differences.

What is the “science" here? And how do we define "well-being?"

"Well-being" is essentially subjective. It is how you feel your life is going. From there, we get more specific by asking questions such as "how satisfied are you with your life?" "How are you feeling right now?" and then we ask questions such as "Are you experiencing joy? Are you happy right now?" We then ask questions about worry and stress. In essence, we are letting people define what happiness is and what makes them happy. We just take their answers seriously. That's our starting point. In short, the definition of well-being is how people feel their lives are going, and then the science of well-being is the systematic approach to explaining and understanding these differences.

Is America happy right now?

No.

The average level of life satisfaction in America is lower than seven out of 10 — and that's just an average that hides a huge amount of variation. There are people in America who report feeling very happy or satisfied with their lives, and then there are a whole lot of people, and increasingly more, who are telling us that they're not satisfied with their lives. In this year's World Happiness Report, the United States ranks 24th. The United States fell out of the top twenty in 2024. The decline in well-being in the U.S. is most pronounced among young people who are younger than 30. If they were studied in isolation, they would only be the 62nd most unhappy country in the world. Americans who are 60 years old and up are much happier and would be in the top 10 if they were their own country. In all, Americans are becoming less and less happy and that is being driven by young people falling off of the proverbial and metaphorical cliff in terms of satisfaction and happiness with their lives.

Here is something else that is very worrisome about young people in America and their levels of happiness. There is typically a U-shaped relationship between age and well-being, where young people are happier. Well-being drops over time until a person hits their midlife crisis, which is usually in one's early 40s, when the pressures of life are immense. Then as people age, they tend to become happier again. This holds until the very end of life when physical issues and disability become more common. That U-shaped relationship between age and well-being no longer holds true in the United States. America's young people are now as unhappy as middle-aged people. Youth in America are experiencing their midlife crisis today. But that finding raises a very difficult question: What is going to happen when the midlife crisis actually hits them? Moreover, if America's young people are having midlife crises now, and are that unhappy and dissatisfied with life, then what is going to happen to the future of the country? From the research, we know that lower levels of life satisfaction and feelings of well-being in youth lead to worse labor market outcomes, i.e. making less money later in life.

What explains the severe unhappiness among America's young people as a group?

There is no single explanation. We need to start by examining a combination of explanatory factors. A prominent one is anxiety about the future and the economy and living the American Dream. What will the future of work be like for a 16 or 17- or 18-year-old given the rise of artificial intelligence and the soaring cost of education? Even if you choose medicine or law or engineering, good luck catching up with AI like ChatGPT. Social media plays a huge role as well.

Social media does not always lead to positive social outcomes. The World Happiness Report has this troubling finding about loneliness and young people. Social isolation and loneliness are increasing problems in the United States and other countries as well.

Public health experts have gone so far as to describe social isolation and loneliness as constituting a public health crisis in the United States. The extent to which a person eats alone, sharing a meal or not, is a way of measuring social loneliness and social isolation. There's a 53% increase in dining alone in the United States over the last two decades. If you look at youth, you see they've almost doubled in terms of the proportion of dining alone.

What do we know about the relationship(s) between social capital, happiness, social ties and overall well-being?

These notions of social capital, social support, social trust and social connections, more generally, are so much more important than many people expect for their well-being. Our relationships with and connections to others are critically important for our happiness. People tend to focus on wealth, income, health and lifespans, both on an individual and society-wide level. But the quality of our social lives — and the levels of trust we have in one another, most notably strangers — is integral to predicting happiness and well-being.

These social indicators are also important in how they relate to the global democracy crisis and the rise of populism. The fact that we're increasingly alone, as indicated, for example, by less and less sharing of meals, means that our views of the world no longer get tested. Normally, when you meet with strangers or friends and family more regularly, everybody has slightly different views on the world and politics and other matters. In response, we tend to moderate our views and compromise more. But the social isolation in combination with the social media echo chamber increases a given person's radicalization and extremism. Ultimately, people tend to be more polarized when they don't interact in a direct personal face-to-face way with people who have different views than they do. That cycle of political polarization is not easy to break.

What role does happiness or lack thereof play in political polarization and extremism?

What we know from the research is that as happiness and life satisfaction decrease in a population then people start voting against the incumbent party and leader, the status quo, and are generally anti-system in their beliefs. Politicians and other leaders can take advantage of the unhappiness for their own purposes. The link between happiness and well-being and political uprising or radicalization is well-documented. For example, this was seen with the Arab Spring and in other parts of the world as well.

What factors help to explain the dramatic differences in happiness and well-being between the United States, the Nordic and Scandinavian countries, and Europe more broadly?

In terms of wealth, a Finland or a Denmark aren't wealthier than the United States on a GDP per capita basis. But they redistribute the wealth more greatly. The rising tide lifting all boats, the welfare state helping out those that need it the most, takes away a big chunk of the anxiety that typically exists here in the United States because of extreme wealth and income inequality. Another key difference is how life expectancy is stagnant and declining for some segments of the population in the United States, where, by comparison, life expectancy and health are high and improving in Scandinavian and the Nordic countries.

But what is making a big difference between the happiness of the United States and the Nordic countries is social trust. For example, if a person returns a stranger's lost wallet. The belief in the likelihood that a stranger's wallet will be returned is substantially higher in the Nordics, as compared to the United States. That's obviously a proxy for social trust in one another and trust in the institutions. 

What do we know about something as seemingly innocuous as returning found wallets and society-wide levels of trust?

People are generally kinder than we assume them to be. That is one of the big insights from the World Happiness Report and related research. As shown in this year's World Happiness Report, people underestimate the kindness of others by a factor of two. So, in the United States, six out of 10 wallets get returned. The more money in the wallet, the more likely it is to be returned. Only a third of Americans think that wallets would actually be returned. We are underestimating by a factor of two the kindness and benevolence of other people, and that's universal. Even in the Nordic countries, 85% or so of wallets get returned in the Nordics but only 45% of the people think that lost wallets will be returned. This is true for every single country in the world. We are radically underestimating the kindness of others.

What can the average American do, both for themselves and also more broadly, to improve the levels of happiness in this country?

Share your meals with others. Talk to strangers. Put your phone away when you are eating with others and try to have real meaningful conversations with people where you listen closely and pay attention.