New Zealand’s happiness ranking linked to sharing meals and helping others

Sharing meals, helping others and material security are parts of the recipe for happiness in countries like New Zealand, Australia, Finland, Indonesia, Jamaica and Senegal. The World Happiness Report 2025 notes a strong link between sharing meals and wellbeing in some countries. That relationship appears to be particularly strong in
countries like New Zealand, which sits No 12 in the world happiness rankings.

For more than a decade, researchers behind the World Happiness Report have sought to codify a comparative scale for wellbeing and highlight the places where it flourishes, with the goal of orienting global public policy around human happiness.

Key factors they examine include material wellbeing, sharing meals, giving to others and helping strangers. “We are very social creatures and actions that help foster connections with others are very likely to offer us happiness,” said Lara Aknin, a professor of social psychology at Simon Fraser University and an editor of this year’s World Happiness Report.

On the flip side: poverty, inequality and a lack of interconnectedness often appear to hamper happiness. In the United States, as families gathered for Thanksgiving, the national moment of togetherness was in stark contrast to a growing trend in everyday life: more than 1 in 4 Americans reported eating all their meals alone on a typical day in 2023, up from 1 in 6 in 2003.

Here is what happiness looks like around the world.

Life satisfaction

Finland has reigned supreme in the world happiness charts for eight years, including in the most recent report, released earlier this year.

“Finland is the land of quiet satisfaction,” said Frank Martela, a professor researching human well-being and motivation at Aalto University in Finland. “When Finnish people stop to think about their lives, they realise that things are relatively okay.”

Finland has garnered the top spot in the World Happiness Report for eight years. Photo / Nora Sayyad, The Washington Post

The World Happiness Report is put out by the Wellbeing Research Centre at Oxford, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and an independent editorial board, with polling by Gallup. The report uses the Cantril Scale, developed by researcher Hadley Cantril, to survey people in more than 140 countries on their self-reported well-being – and to examine the conditions that give rise to it.

Survey respondents are asked to evaluate their happiness by the rungs of a 10-step ladder, on which “10” represents the ideal life – a methodology that has its critics, some of whom find that it misses more nuanced concepts of wellbeing. The report includes a happiness ranking by country, based on these responses, which tends to draw the most attention. But it also looks beyond its most high-profile ranking, to other metrics for and varied sources of happiness around the globe.

Finland is the land of “quiet satisfaction”. Photo / Nora Sayyad, The Washington Post

Finland’s repeated top spot in the global ranking does not mean it has the highest level of positive emotions, or joyfulness, Martela said. In a ranking of places where people smiled most often, Finland would not be in the top 10.

“The ranking is more driven by the fact there’s very few extremely unhappy people in Finland,” he said.

Other Nordic countries – such as Iceland, Sweden and Norway – with high GDP per capita, low income inequality and low rates of poverty have been its consistent companions.

“Nordic countries also offer universal welfare benefits for their citizens,” Martela said. “Research shows that providing free health care, free education, unemployment benefits, maternity and paternity leave will result in higher levels of life satisfaction.”

Researchers say a well-functioning government and political freedoms impact Finland’s ranking. Photo / Nora Sayyad, The Washington Post

The role of a well-functioning government and political freedoms can’t be understated, he said.

Still, Finland, the world’s happiest country in terms of “life satisfaction” by the report’s overall measure, ranks lower in some other categories the authors examine: charity, helping strangers and eating meals in community.

Lower levels of individual giving and volunteering could be explained by the Finnish preference for universal over targeted social assistance. When residents are asked if they believe a neighbour, police officer or stranger would return a dropped wallet to its owner, Finns say they believe people in all three categories would be eager to help.

Donation and volunteering

Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most-populous country, tops the report’s rankings of countries where the largest share of people made a charitable donation and volunteered their time in the past month.

The Indonesian concept of gotong royong – meaning “collaboration” or “doing things together” – is ubiquitous, from organising weddings to responding to disasters, said Aulia Nastiti, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Research at Monash University in Indonesia.

The Indonesian value of gotong royong (meaning “collaboration” or “doing things together”) has become a civic obligation, tied to being a good citizen. Photo / Aziziah Diah Aprilya, The Washington Post

“This spirit of mutual aid is deeply embedded in social life” across the archipelago, she said. “People grow up with the expectation that you don’t face problems alone, you rally around their family, neighbours or the local mosque community if they are in trouble.”

Gotong royong is more than a long-standing cultural value. In the popular imagination, it has been politicised by state messaging and 20th-century nation building, invoked by Indonesia’s founding President Sukarno as a core principle of a country seeking a unifying postcolonial identity. It became an expectation, almost a civic obligation, tied to being a “good citizen,” Nastiti said.

For many adherents of Islam, Indonesia’s majority religion, obligatory as well as voluntary giving is seen as a moral duty and a spiritual act. Photo / Aziziah Diah Aprilya, The Washington Post

Religious belief plays a powerful role in encouraging donation and volunteering, Nastiti said. For many adherents of Islam, the country’s majority religion, obligatory as well as voluntary giving is seen as a moral duty and a spiritual act. But levels of giving are heavily influenced by a confluence of factors, including tax policies and state involvement in social welfare.

“People feel good when they give,” Nastiti said. “It’s also a kind of social insurance because if they are in need tomorrow the state won’t be there to help.”

Community members in Indonesia create informal networks of care by pooling money and organising WhatsApp groups to help others. Photo / Aziziah Diah Aprilya, The Washington Post

Community members create informal networks of care by pooling money when someone is sick or in an accident; they organise WhatsApp groups to share job tips or emotional support, Nastiti said. These aren’t viewed as mere social groups. They are survival strategies.

“The strong belief in gotong royong reflects the strength of our social fabric and the weakness of institutional support,” she said.

Helping a stranger

The people of Jamaica were ranked most likely to help a stranger, and placed in the top 10 for volunteering.

Growing up in Jamaica, Michelle Beadle Holder, a Maryland-based social scientist, remembers constantly being told to be grateful and kind. If someone helps strangers, they are seen as a good person, she said.

Jamaica’s culture of helping others is largely necessitated by the island nation’s lack of a social safety net. That ethos is even in action at Jamaica’s waterfalls, where strangers will hold hands as they climb, to help anyone who trips. Photo / Thomas Simonetti, The Washington Post

“Children are taught proverbs about helping everyone,” she said, adding that the culture is necessitated by the lack of a social safety net in Jamaica.

Watch people climb a steep waterfall path in Jamaica, and you will see the ethos in action, she said.

“You climb waterfalls by holding hands with the person next to you, it doesn’t matter if they are family or a stranger,” Holder said. “The idea is that if someone trips, others are there to hold them up.”

Growing up in Jamaica, kids are told to be grateful and kind. Photo / Thomas Simonetti, The Washington Post

Jamaica, Liberia and Sierra Leone rank highly for helping strangers – but not in donations. Nigeria and Kenya, also in the top 10 for helping strangers, follow the same pattern.

These five ranked low on a list of countries in which survey respondents were asked if they would trust a police officer to return a dropped wallet, signalling a broader lack of faith in government institutions.

Children in Jamaica are taught proverbs about helping everyone. Photo / Thomas Simonetti, The Washington Post

In countries with weak institutional structures, people often view helping strangers directly as more effective than donating to charities, according to the report.

Herbert Gayle, a social anthropologist from the University of the West Indies, said it wasn’t surprising that Jamaicans would rank as among the kindest in the world to strangers by the report’s measures. “Historically, people who have suffered as a group tend to try to save others from suffering,” Gayle said. “Jamaicans feel compelled to treat strangers well.”

Sharing meals

In Senegal, people do not make light of lunchtime. Children rush home from school. Office workers head home, too. Teachers and bosses don’t mind – they need to be home for lunch with their families as well, said Samba Sow, a teacher and nonprofit worker from Senegal.

On average, people eat meals with family or friends almost 12 times a week, more than anywhere else. Gambia, Malaysia and Paraguay are tied for second place, with people in these locations eating together 11 times a week, according to the World Happiness Report.

The Senegalese custom of multiple families eating together ensures that no one goes hungry, no matter their financial status. Photo / Carmen Yasmine Abd Ali, The Washington Post

In the United States, on the other hand, Thanksgiving – when families gather, sometimes from far corners of the country – is an exception. In general, Americans are spending less and less time eating meals with others.

For Americans, dining alone has increased in every age group, but especially among younger people.

Families in Senegal sit around and eat together from one large plate.

“Eating food together, from the same platter, is a tradition that is older than Senegal itself,” Sow said. “It is one of the most important values in our culture and it makes us feel close together and loved.”

Children in Senegal are taught how to eat from the communal platters without disturbing those sitting beside them from a young age. Photo / Carmen Yasmine Abd Ali, The Washington Post

While communal eating remains common, the number of people who gather for meals has gone down, Sow said.

“Nowadays, its mostly single-unit families and one set of grandparents eating their meals together,” he said. “Earlier, multiple families whether they were siblings, relatives or neighbours, would eat together, sharing all their food.”

Multiple families eating together ensures that no one goes hungry, regardless of their financial status.

Still, during cultural or religious events – such as the Grand Magal, an annual religious pilgrimage, or Mawlid, the marking of prophet Muhammad’s birthday – millions eat together from thousands of platters, Sow said.

“In Senegal, eating meals together is a form of socialisation,” said Shigehiro Oishi, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago. “If people are eating meals and spending time together, they will experience positive emotions more frequently.”

On average, people in Senegal eat meals with family or friends almost 12 times a week, more than anywhere else. Photo / Carmen Yasmine Abd Ali, The Washington Post

Those who share more meals with others report significantly higher levels of life satisfaction across ages, genders, countries, cultures and regions, according to the World Happiness Report.

Eating collectively together is an art, Sow said. As children, Senegalese are taught how to eat from the platter without disturbing those sitting beside them.

“You can scoop the protein and vegetables from the middle, but you have to be sure not to take someone else’s share,” he said. “It’s a way of showing that you respect the food as well as those sitting beside you.”

Data from Gallup’s World Happiness Report and the Ajinomoto Group/Gallup. Rankings are based on aggregated results from 2022 to 2024.

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