Self-reported life satisfaction (Cantril ladder)
Average answer to the Cantril ladder question in the Gallup World Poll, as compiled by the World Happiness Report.
- World median
- 5.94
- across 146 countries, 2025
- Latest observation
- 2025
- Source updated
- 16 Mar 2026
- CountryAtlas refreshed
- 11 Sep 2026
- Snapshot 20260911T072322Z
World map
One value per country for the selected year. Hatched = no data.
No data available
Trend
Aggregate across the countries of a group, year by year. Computed by CountryAtlas from country values — no published aggregate is used.
Not enough countries to aggregate this indicator for World.
Highest and lowest
The five leaders and the five trailing countries, 2025.
Top 5
- 7.76
- 7.54
- 7.54
- 7.44
- 7.26
Source: Our World in Data — grapher · happiness-cantril-ladder
Bottom 5
- 142Botswana3.46
- 143Zimbabwe3.35
- 144Malawi3.28
- 145Sierra Leone3.25
- 146Afghanistan1.45
Source: Our World in Data — grapher · happiness-cantril-ladder
Compare countries
Pick up to five countries. Defaults to the three largest economies with data.
No series for the selected countries.
Definition
- Definition
- Average answer to the Cantril ladder question in the Gallup World Poll, as compiled by the World Happiness Report.
- Unit
- score (0–10) (/10)
- Frequency
- Annual
- Aggregation
- none · Higher is better
- Valid range
- 0 – 10
Sources & provenance
Every value on this page comes from one of these series, chosen per country by priority.
- Priority #1Open at source164 countries · 2,089 obs. · → 2025 · CC BY 4.0
Self-reported life satisfaction — Wellbeing Research Centre (2026)
Series-level selection: for each country the whole series comes from the highest-priority source that has any non-forecast value for it. If a lower-priority source is more than three years fresher, the freshest source wins instead. Non-chosen values are kept as alternatives, never discarded.
Countries without data
Typical reasons: the source does not survey small territories or micro-states; the statistical office reports with a lag of one to three years; the series is only compiled for member countries of the source organisation (OECD, EU, Eurostat); or a value exists but failed validation and is quarantined rather than shown.
Downloads & API
Every observation for this indicator, all countries and years, with provenance columns.
API example
One country, full history. Replace CAN by any ISO3 code or slug.
curl -s "https://www.countryatlas.co/api/v1/series?country=CAN&indicator=life-satisfaction" | jq '.series[0] | {country: .country.name, unit, last: .stats.last, source: .provenance.source_name}'