Despite Trump’s claims of a golden era, U.S. happiness falls to new low — below Mexico’s

Andres Oppenheimer

President Trump said in his recent State of the Union address that America is going through “the greatest and most successful era in the history of our country.” Sorry for the bad news, Mr. President, but the latest polls and a massive new study on global happiness tell a different story.

Separate new polls by CNN and Fox News showed that, amid Trump’s trade wars, a steep drop in the U.S. stock market and fears of a recession, a 56% percent majority of Americans disapprove of the president’s handling of the economy. That’s a lower rating than Trump ever got in his first presidency on this issue.

Simultaneously, the newly-released 2025 World Happiness Report’ ranking of life satisfaction in 147 countries shows that life satisfaction in the United States continues to decline, as it has been doing gradually for more than a decade. So much so that Americans today are less happy than — hear this — Mexicans.

The new study ranked Finland as the world’s happiest country for the eighth year in row, followed by Denmark and several other northern European countries.

For the first time since the study started in 2012, two Latin American countries, Costa Rica and Mexico, made it to the top 10 happiest nations. They ranked in the 6th and 10th place, respectively.

Israel, despite the Hamas terrorist attack and the war that ensued, ranked as the 8th happiest country. By comparison, the United States ranked 24th, down from 23rd in 2024 and 11th in 2012.

Further down in the ranking, Brazil ranked 36th, Argentina 42nd, Chile 45th, Colombia 61st, and Peru 65th. Among the world’s least happy countries was Venezuela, in 82nd place.

The world happiness ranking, coordinated by the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Center, cannot be taken lightly. It’s not based on experts’ subjective opinions, but mainly on the Gallup World Poll, which asks people in each country to measure their own life satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10.

Curious about the decline of happiness in the United States, and the rise of life satisfaction in several Latin American countries, I asked some of the reports’ co-authors how they explain these trends.

Most agreed that happiness in the United States is falling because of social isolation, especially among young people aged under 30. Young Americans have more Instagram followers but fewer real-life friends. Many of them have lost faith in the American dream.

Ranked by their age, their life satisfaction is below that of their peers in the 60 happiest countries.

And more Americans of all ages are dining alone, the study found. In 2023, about 1 in 4 Americans reported eating all of their meals alone the previous day — an increase of 53% since 2003, it said.

In addition, Americans are increasingly anxious about their future, as robots and artificial intelligence take over growing numbers of jobs, and political polarization erodes happiness and unity, it said.

By comparison, in Mexico and other Latin American countries, people tend to live in households with four or five relatives, and their families are a source of joy and support.

“In Latin America, happiness cannot be explained by economic factors, but by the strength of human relations,” Lina Gutierrez, a professor at the Icesi University in Colombia and co-author of the World Happiness Report’s chapter on Latin America, told me. “Family ties are very important to us.”

Still, if Mexicans are so much happier than Americans, why is there a steady flow of Mexicans crossing the border to the United States, and not the other way around, I asked.

Mariano Rojas, a professor at Mexico’s Technological Institute and another co-author of the report’s chapter on Latin America, told me that the number of Mexicans who cross the border is very small relative to the country’s 130 million population. Indeed, the total number of Mexicans who crossed the border without immigration papers in recent years was much smaller than that of Haitians, Cubans or Venezuelans.

“People are not fleeing massively from Mexico,” Rojas told me. “Most stay here, and are happy, in part because of the relational warmth one finds here.”

But Rojas cautioned that Mexico’s rise to the 10 happiest countries in the world in the latest ranking may not be due to an increase of life satisfaction in Mexico, but by declining happiness in the United States and several other developed countries in the ranking.

If Latin America solved its violence and inequality problems while maintaining its close-knit personal relations, it would be even happier, Rojas told me. Several other countries in the region could rank among the world’s happiest, he said.

My conclusion after looking into life satisfaction levels around the world for several years, and writing a recent book about it, is that the old conclusion still stands: Rich countries are generally happier than poor ones, which explains why Finland and its neighbors usually top the happiness rankings.

But while economic prosperity is essential, it is not sufficient to make countries happier. There’s a lot more the United States and other developed countries should do to combat loneliness, promote kindness and inspire altruism to increase happiness. Needless to say, we are not doing it.