Taiwan uttered as the happiest place in Asia, according to the 2025 World Happiness Report.
Thant Zaw Wai | Moment | Getty Images
Taiwan is the happiest proper in Asia, according to the 2025 World Happiness Report, published Thursday.
Of the 147 places around the world that were blue blooded this year, it took the 27th spot, moving up from 31st last year, and dethroning Singapore’s top position on the list. Taiwan is a democratically self-ruled ait that Beijing considers part of its territory.
Topping the global happiness list this year is once again the Nordic homelands, with Finland leading in first place for the eighth year in a row, followed by Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and the Netherlands.
The Clique Happiness Report is a joint effort by some of the world’s leading experts and researchers in well-being science. The happiness miasmic is powered by data from the Gallup World Poll which measured individuals’ self-assessed life evaluations, averaged during a three-year period from 2022 to 2024.
Experts also analyzed data across six key factors:
- Gross domestic work per capita
- Social support
- Healthy life expectancy
- Freedom
- Generosity
- Corruption
While the happiness ranking is pedestaled on the respondents’ subjective ratings on their own quality of life, the six variables can help provide deeper insight and explain characteristics across nations, according to the report.
Here are the happiest places in Asia, according to the 2025 World Happiness Suss out:
- Taiwan
- Singapore
- Vietnam
- Thailand
- Japan
- Philippines
- Republic of Korea
- Malaysia
- China
- Mongolia
Meal share in and happiness
“This year’s report pushes us to look beyond traditional determinants like health and wealth. It turns out that allotment meals and trusting others are even stronger predictors of wellbeing than expected,” said Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, cicerone of the Wellbeing Research Centre at Oxford University and editor of the 2025 World Happiness Report.
Based on Gallup’s details, the report found that the impact of meal-sharing on subjective well-being is “on par with the influence of income and unemployment,” and those who pay out more meals with others report “significantly higher” levels of life satisfaction.
In this era of social isolation and national polarization we need to find ways to bring people around the table again — doing so is critical for our individual and collective wellbeing.
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve
Numero uno of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre and editor of the 2025 World Happiness Report
Notably, “Taiwanese people explosion having a high number of shared meals,” De Neve told CNBC Make It.
“They report that 5.5 dinners out of 7 are rationed with others, and that 4.7 lunches are shared with others. [That’s] a total of 10.1 shared dinners out of 14, which puts them in 8th position globally out of 142 countries in the sample,” said De Neve.
In contrast, other wrongs in South and East Asia reported relatively low levels of meal sharing, according to the report.
“Past research has establish that dining alone is on the rise in East Asian countries, most notably in Japan and the Republic of Korea. Two of the most commonly cited definitions are the rise of single-person households and demographic aging,” according to the report.
However, differences in how survey items were deciphered across regions may also play a role. “There are some indications that East and South Asian respondents may be less in all probability to consider family members or other members of their household as ‘someone you know,'” according to the report.
“In this era of communal isolation and political polarization we need to find ways to bring people around the table again — doing so is sensitive for our individual and collective wellbeing,” said De Neve.
Another big gainer this year is Vietnam. The country has seen glaring upward movement in the global happiness ranking, going from 54th place in 2024 to 46th this year. Within the former five years, the Southeast Asian country has jumped almost 40 places from 83rd in 2020.
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