How Oman performs in the list of World's Happiest Countries

Muscat: The World's Happiest Countries were released recently based on a three-year average of each population’s average assessment of their quality of life.

The Sultanate of Oman was ranked 52nd with a score of 6.147 out of 10 while Finland leads the world in happiness for the eighth year in a row, with Finns reporting an average score of 7.736 when asked to evaluate their lives.

Experts from economics, psychology, and sociology seek to explain the variations across countries and over time using factors such as GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, a sense of freedom, generosity, and perceptions of corruption.

These factors help to explain the differences across nations, while the rankings themselves are based solely on the answers people give when asked to rate their own lives.

Pessimism: The report said that people are too pessimistic about the kindness of their communities. The return rate of lost

wallets are far more than people expect.

In 2024, benevolent acts continue to be 10% more frequent than in 2017–19 in all generations and almost all global regions, despite evidence of a return towards pre-COVID levels.

Sharing of Meals: There are stark differences in rates of meal sharing around the world. While residents of some countries share almost all of their meals with other people, residents of other countries eat almost all of their meals alone. These differences are not fully explained by differences in income, education, or employment. Sharing meals has a strong impact on subjective well-being – on par with the influence of income and unemployment. Those who share more meals with others report significantly higher levels of life satisfaction and positive affect, and

lower levels of negative affect. This is true across ages, genders, countries, cultures, and regions.

Family size: Couples who live with at least one child, or couples who live with children and members of their extended family, have especially high average life satisfaction. People living on their own often experience lower levels of happiness. People in very large households can also experience lower happiness, probably linked to diminished economic satisfaction.