Happy Passports: An index of wellbeing, freedom and mobility 

What is happiness, and can it be measured? Is it the pleasure of a good day, or the judgment people make about their lives as a whole? And what is mobility: the number of borders a passport opens, or the wider freedom to choose where to live, work and belong? Once basic needs are met, does a good life depend only on conditions at home, or also on the options a nationality carries abroad? And do the countries where people are happiest also hold the strongest passports? 

This briefing brings together two things usually measured apart: how people in a country rate their lives, and how far its passport lets them travel. What connects them is freedom. Once basic needs are satisfied, “higher” needs come to dominate (Maslow, 1943, p. 375), and a good life depends more on the freedom to make one’s own choices, including where to live and work. Beyond the border, that freedom depends largely on a person’s passport. A passport is therefore treated not as a source of happiness, but as an enabler that widens its holders’ choices, including the option to leave if circumstances at home change. 

The Happy Passports Index scores 50 countries across six regions on four equally weighted pillars: wellbeing; freedom at home, measured both as people feel it and as the civil liberties they hold; mobility; and prosperity, health and safety. It describes countries rather than individuals: a happy passport is the nationality of a country that combines a good life with wide access to the world. 

One of the findings is that the happiest countries also hold some of the strongest passports: Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland rank in the top ten on both, and Finland leads the index. Below the top, however, the two part ways. Portugal and Greece hold passports among the ten strongest but rank 39th and 43rd on life evaluation, while Costa Rica and Israel are among the ten happiest countries but hold passports in the bottom half. Some of the most striking cases come from Latin America, where people report more happiness than their passports or incomes would suggest. 

Happiness has been central to descriptions of a good life since ancient times (Helliwell et al., 2026, p. 19). Research on wellbeing has developed from two general perspectives: a hedonic approach, which defines wellbeing in terms of attaining pleasure and avoiding pain, and a eudaimonic approach, which focuses on meaning, self-realization and the degree to which a person is fully functioning (Ryan & Deci, 2001, p. 141). Many of these ancient ideas about happiness can now be tested against modern psychological research (Haidt, 2006). This briefing draws on that debate but has a practical purpose: to compare and contrast countries using the data available. It therefore works with the definitions used in international research and official statistics. 

In practice, researchers separate two sides of happiness. Emotional wellbeing refers to the frequency and intensity of everyday experiences such as joy, stress, sadness, anger and affection; life evaluation refers to the thoughts people have about their life when they think about it (Kahneman & Deaton, 2010). The OECD’s definition of subjective wellbeing covers both, as life evaluation and affect, and adds a third element, eudaimonia: a sense of meaning and purpose in life (OECD, 2013). The two sides respond to different circumstances. In more than 450,000 responses from US residents, income and education were more closely related to life evaluation, while health, caregiving, loneliness and smoking were relatively stronger predictors of daily emotions (Kahneman & Deaton, 2010). 

For international comparisons, the World Happiness Report (WHR) treats life evaluations as the most informative measure: they vary more between countries than emotions do and are better explained by the different life circumstances in each country (Helliwell et al., 2026, p. 18). The WHR measures life evaluation with the Cantril Ladder, on which respondents rate their current life from 0 (the worst possible life for them) to 10 (the best possible) (p. 18). Finland ranks first in 2026 with an average of 7.764 (p. 21). Six variables (log GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom to make life choices, generosity and perceptions of corruption) together explain more than three-quarters of the variation in life evaluations across countries and years, using data from 2006 to 2025 (p. 26). 

Happiness is also linked to longevity, and not only as an outcome. A review of longitudinal, experimental and naturalistic studies concluded that high subjective wellbeing, including life satisfaction and positive emotions, contributes to longer and healthier lives in healthy populations (Diener & Chan, 2011). 

Figure 1. Life evaluations across the EU-27 (Cantril Ladder, 2023–2025 average). Source: Helliwell et al. (2026), World Happiness Report 2026, Ch. 2, Figure 2.1, pp. 21–22. The EU-27 average is an unweighted mean calculated by GCS GIU. Scores reflect resident populations, not citizenship. 

As Figure 1 shows, the spread is wide even within Europe: across the 27 EU member states, scores range from 7.764 in Finland to 5.697 in Greece, a gap of more than two points on the 0–10 scale, with 14 members above the EU-27 average of 6.625 and 13 below it (Helliwell et al., 2026, pp. 21–22).  

Beyond basic needs: why freedom and mobility matter 

Maslow’s theory of human motivation offers a framework for thinking about what people value once their basic needs are met. He arranged human needs in a hierarchy, from physiological and safety needs to love, esteem and self-actualization (Maslow, 1943, p. 394), and argued that once the more basic needs are satisfied, “higher” needs emerge and come to dominate (p. 375). He also listed the freedom to do what one wishes, so long as no harm is done to others, among the preconditions for satisfying basic needs (p. 383). 

Evidence on income is consistent with this pattern. Kahneman and Deaton (2010) find that a lack of money brings both emotional misery and low life evaluation: among US respondents who had spent the previous day alone, 58.9% of those in households earning under $1,000 a month reported sadness and worry, compared with 31.5% of those earning at least $3,000. Above an annual income of about $75,000, however, emotional wellbeing stopped improving, while life evaluation kept rising up to well over $120,000 (Kahneman & Deaton, 2010). 

Thus, the central idea the briefing highlights is that once income and security are in place, what makes people satisfied with their lives extends beyond material needs to include choice, opportunity and freedom. The Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress made a related point, noting that the determinants of subjective wellbeing “go well beyond people’s income and material conditions” (Stiglitz et al., 2009, p. 216; see also OECD, 2013). The WHR also finds that freedom to make life choices, one of its six explanatory variables, has an even larger association with positive emotions than with life evaluations (Helliwell et al., 2026, p. 26). 

This briefing extends that idea of freedom beyond the border. The Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress identifies three conceptual approaches to measuring quality of life, among them one based on subjective wellbeing and one based on capabilities, which conceives a person’s life as a combination of “doings and beings” and of the “freedom to choose” among them (Stiglitz et al., 2009, p. 42). This briefing treats a passport as one such capability, since it shapes where a person can travel and, with that, where they can study, work and settle. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes both the right to freedom of movement within a country and the right to leave any country, including one’s own, and to return to it (United Nations, 1948, Art. 13). The index therefore includes passport mobility not as a source of happiness in itself, but as part of the freedom this briefing places at the center of a good life, and as an option that remains open if circumstances at home change. 

In this briefing, happiness means life evaluation: how people judge their life as a whole, measured by the World Happiness Report’s Cantril Ladder and referred to here as the Happiness Index. Scores are 2023–2025 national averages of residents’ ratings (Helliwell et al., 2026, pp. 18–24). 

Mobility means passport mobility: the countries and territories a nationality gives access to, scored by the type of entry and by each destination’s quality of life, so that access to a country with a high standard of living counts for more than access to a less stable one. It is measured by the Enhanced Mobility score of the GCS Global Passport Index (Global Citizen Solutions, 2026). It measures the option to travel, and with it the wider choice of where to study, work and live, but not whether citizens use that option. 

Novelty 

Two features set the index apart from existing happiness and passport rankings. 

Mobility alongside wellbeing. Happiness rankings describe life within a country; passport rankings count borders. The index brings the two together, treating a passport as an enabler of choice that extends a country’s freedoms beyond its border. 

Freedom, felt and held. The index measures freedom at home in two complementary ways: how free people feel to make their own life choices, as reported in the Gallup World Poll, and the civil liberties they hold, as assessed by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project (Coppedge et al., 2026). A country scores well only where people both feel free and are free. 

How the index answers it 

The index breaks its question into four, one per pillar: How do people rate their own lives? Are they free, in how they feel and in the rights they hold? How far does the country’s passport reach? Are the conditions in place to sustain a good life? Each pillar answers its question with one to three indicators (Figure 2). Within each pillar, indicators are weighted equally, and the four pillars carry equal weight in the final score. 

Figure 2. Pillars, indicators and weights of the Happy Passports Index. Source: GCS Global Intelligence Unit. 

Wellbeing (25%): How do people rate their own lives? The Happiness Index: the national average rating of life on a scale from 0, the worst possible life, to 10, the best possible. 

Freedom at Home (25%): Are people free, in how they feel and in the rights they hold? Freedom of Choice captures how satisfied people are with their freedom to choose what to do with their lives; the Civil Liberties Index captures the rights they hold, from freedom of expression and association to freedom of movement and religion. 

Mobility (25%): How far does the country’s passport reach? Passport Mobility, measured by the GCS Global Passport Index Enhanced Mobility score. 

Prosperity, Health & Safety (25%): Are the conditions in place to sustain a good life? Income per person (World Bank, 2026), healthy life expectancy (World Health Organization, 2026) and peace (Institute for Economics & Peace, 2026). 

How the index was built. The index compares a curated panel of 50 countries chosen for geographic diversity across six regions and for their relevance to international mobility, including leading wellbeing performers, major destinations for internationally mobile individuals and the largest countries they come from. Every country in the panel has a World Happiness Report 2026 life evaluation and data on all seven indicators; four missing values are imputed or substituted.  

Each indicator is rescaled with min-max normalization, so that the lowest-scoring country in the sample receives 0 and the highest 100. Indicators are averaged within each pillar, and the four pillars are combined with equal weights into a final score from 0 to 100. Most composite indicators rely on equal weighting (OECD & JRC, 2008, p. 31). In the absence of an agreed basis for weighting wellbeing, freedom, mobility and living conditions against each other, the index follows this convention. It applies equal weights to the four pillars rather than to the seven indicators, since weighting indicators equally would give more weight to pillars with more indicators. 

Finland leads the Happy Passports Index with a score of 93.2, ahead of Iceland (92.4) and Denmark (92.1). The margins at the top are narrow: little more than one point separates the first three, and just over ten points separate first place from tenth (Figure 3). Eight of the top ten are European, and New Zealand and Singapore bring Asia-Pacific into the group. Costa Rica, in 13th place, is the highest-ranked country outside these two regions. As the introduction noted, the top of the ranking is where happiness and mobility meet most closely: five of the top six also hold passports among the ten strongest in the sample. Similar scores, however, can hide very different profiles. 

Figure 3. The top ten countries in the Happy Passports Index, by pillar contribution. Source: GCS Global Intelligence Unit. 

Finland owes its position above all to what its people say about their own lives. It records the highest life evaluation in the world, at 7.764 (Helliwell et al., 2026, p. 21), and ranks second in the sample on both freedom at home and mobility. Its one comparatively modest pillar is prosperity, health and safety, where it ranks 11th: its income per person is 17th in the sample and its healthy life expectancy 21st. 

Iceland and Denmark reach almost the same score by different routes. Iceland ranks first in the sample on freedom at home and is the most peaceful country in the world (Institute for Economics & Peace, 2026), while its passport ranks 20th in the sample. Denmark is the most balanced country in the index: it is the only one to rank in the top four on all four pillars, combining the third-highest life evaluation in the sample with the second-highest civil liberties score and the third-strongest passport. 

Switzerland, in fifth place, follows a more material path. It ranks second on prosperity, health and safety, with the third-highest income in the sample, and is the third most peaceful country in the world (Institute for Economics & Peace, 2026), while its life evaluation ranks ninth. Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands complete the European group. Sweden records the highest civil liberties score in the sample. 

Outside Europe, New Zealand ranks eighth. It is the second most peaceful country in the world (Institute for Economics & Peace, 2026) and ranks fifth in the sample on civil liberties, although its income per person is only 25th. Singapore, in tenth place, shows the opposite profile. It has the highest income, the longest healthy life expectancy and the strongest passport in the sample, which places it first on both mobility and prosperity, health and safety. However, it ranks 23rd on wellbeing and 30th on freedom at home, where its civil liberties score is 39th in the sample. Singapore illustrates why the index measures freedom in two ways: strong material foundations and a strong passport do not, on their own, place a country at the top.  

A closer look at the data shows that happiness, income and mobility move together, but only up to a point. Across the 50 countries, the rank correlation between life evaluation and passport strength is 0.54, and between life evaluation and income 0.63, where 1 would mean a perfect match. Among the higher-income half of the sample, however, both relationships weaken considerably, to 0.28 for passport strength and 0.29 for income. This is consistent with the overlap at the top of the ranking: the countries where happiness and mobility meet most closely are a small group, mainly the Nordic countries and Switzerland, while many other high-income countries with equally strong passports, in Southern Europe and East Asia, report more modest life evaluations. What does continue to go with happiness among the higher-income countries is freedom: there, life evaluation is closely linked to people’s sense of freedom to make life choices (0.79) and, more moderately, to civil liberties (0.55). This is not to say that passports matter little: a passport’s value lies largely in the options it opens abroad, which surveys of life at home are not designed to capture. Comparing each country’s life evaluation with what its income alone would predict makes the pattern clearer still: ten of the twelve Latin American countries in the sample report higher life evaluations than their income would suggest, while all six Southern European countries and the three East Asian economies report lower ones. Three of the groups below follow from where each country falls relative to the sample median on happiness and passport strength (Figure 4); the fourth, the Wellbeing Sweet Spot, cuts across them. The remaining 18 countries sit below the median on both measures, although several fall only just short; their full results are in Appendix A. 

Figure 4. Life evaluation rank and passport strength rank across the 50 countries, by group. Source: GCS Global Intelligence Unit. 

As demonstrated above, the happier a country, the higher it appears in the figure; the stronger its passport, the further right. Countries in the shaded top-right corner do well on both. Because the figure shows only these two measures, a country’s position in it can differ from its place in the index. 

The Happiest Passports 

Eighteen countries rank in the top half of the sample on both life evaluation and passport strength. They include the Nordic countries, most of Western Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. Together they hold all of the top twelve places in the index, and they share the highest incomes in the sample, long healthy lives and, for the most part, high levels of peace and civil liberties. Within the group, passports differ relatively little, so it is how people rate their lives, and how free they are at home, that sets the order. The Nordic countries take five of the top seven places on life evaluation. France and Italy, by contrast, hold passports among the twelve strongest in the sample but rank 22nd and 24th on life evaluation, which places them 19th and 18th overall. The group’s lowest-ranked members show why freedom is measured in two ways. In the United Arab Emirates (23rd), residents report a strong sense of freedom to make life choices, ninth in the sample, but its civil liberties score is the second lowest. In the United States (28th), the pattern is reversed: its civil liberties score is in the middle of the sample, but Americans’ sense of freedom of choice ranks 47th, and the country ranks 45th on peace. 

Happy Despite Limited Mobility 

Seven countries report high life evaluations while holding comparatively weaker passports: Costa Rica, Uruguay, Mexico, Panama and Brazil in Latin America, along with Israel and Saudi Arabia. What these countries share is not income, which at a median of about USD 38,000 is half that of the Happiest Passports. Instead, they share happiness that outpaces their means. Costa Rica reports the largest gap in the sample between its life evaluation and what its income would predict, at 1.2 points on the 0–10 scale, and Mexico and Brazil also rank among the top six on this measure (Figure 5). This is consistent with the World Happiness Report’s finding that Latin American countries report higher life evaluations than their circumstances predict, a difference it attributes in part to features of family and social life (Helliwell et al., 2026, p. 29). 

Figure 5. Life evaluation and income per person across the 50 countries. Source: GCS Global Intelligence Unit. 

The figure compares each country’s happiness with what its income alone would predict: countries above the dashed line are happier than their income suggests, and those below less so. Costa Rica stands out most. With about half of Canada’s income per person, it ranks fourth in the world on life evaluation (Helliwell et al., 2026). Part of the explanation may lie in the kind of development the country has pursued. Costa Rica generated 98.6% of its electricity from renewable sources in 2025 (Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad, 2026), and it ranks first on the Happy Planet Index 2026, which measures how efficiently countries turn natural resources into long and happy lives (Hot or Cool Institute, 2026). The data does not show that clean energy makes people happier, but it does suggest that high wellbeing need not depend on high consumption. 

Seen through the Happy Passports Index, the picture shifts. Latin America’s strength lies above all in how people rate their lives, and Costa Rica still ranks 13th overall. Southern European and East Asian countries, by contrast, rise above their happiness rank on the strength of their passports, health and peace. Israel and Saudi Arabia, eighth and 16th on life evaluation, rank 29th and 41st, with the lowest peace and civil liberties scores in the sample respectively. 

Mobile but Not as Happy 

Malta, Portugal, Japan, Cyprus, Malaysia, Spain and Greece hold strong passports but report lower life evaluations. They come close to the Happiest Passports on most objective measures and exceed them on one: they record the longest healthy life expectancy of any group. Several are also among the most peaceful countries in the world: Portugal ranks seventh, Japan tenth and Malaysia 12th (Institute for Economics & Peace, 2026). As a result, every country in the group ranks higher in the index than on life evaluation alone. Spain rises from 26th on life evaluation to 16th in the index, Malta from 27th to 14th and Portugal from 39th to 21st; Malta and Spain rank above the United Kingdom and the United States. What sets the group apart is how residents rate their lives: all seven report lower life evaluations than their income would predict, although Spain only marginally; it also misses the sample median by less than 0.01 points. Across the sample, healthy life expectancy is more weakly linked to life evaluation (0.37) than income or passport strength is. Long and healthy lives, in other words, do not automatically translate into higher self-reported happiness. Part of the gap may also lie in how people answer: the World Happiness Report notes that lower scores in East Asia may reflect cultural differences in how people think about and report on their lives (Helliwell et al., 2026, p. 29). The conditions for a good life are largely in place in these countries; what differs is how residents judge it.  

The Wellbeing Sweet Spot 

Finally, three countries show that a country does not need the highest income or the strongest passport to offer a good life: New Zealand, Australia and Malta, which this briefing calls the Wellbeing Sweet Spot. None of them is among the ten richest countries in the sample or holds one of its ten strongest passports. What sets them apart is balance: each ranks in the top half of the sample on every dimension the index measures beyond happiness, from passport strength and freedom at home to prosperity, health and safety. As a result, they rank above countries that are wealthier or more mobile. New Zealand, only 25th on income, ranks eighth in the index, combining the fifth-highest civil liberties score in the sample with the second-highest level of peace in the world (Institute for Economics & Peace, 2026). Australia, 15th on income, ranks above the United States, which has the fourth-highest income in the sample. Malta’s residents rate their lives more modestly, yet it ranks eighth in the sample on prosperity, health and safety and 14th in the index. For those weighing where to live, they show that the strongest option is not always the richest or the most mobile country, but the most balanced one. 

Do the happiest countries also hold the strongest passports? At the top, largely yes: five of the top six in the index, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland and Sweden, also hold passports among the ten strongest in the sample. Below the top, however, the two part ways. Among the higher-income countries, life evaluation is far more closely linked to people’s sense of freedom to make life choices (0.79) than to passport strength (0.28). This does not make passports less valuable: their value lies largely in the options they open abroad, which surveys of life at home are not designed to capture. 

The index also shows that a good life can rest on different strengths. In Latin America, it rests above all on how people rate their lives: ten of the twelve Latin American countries report higher life evaluations than their income would predict, and Costa Rica, 34th on income, ranks 13th in the index. In Southern Europe and East Asia, it rests on strong passports, long healthy lives and peace, which lift every country from these regions in the sample above its happiness rank. 

For individuals and families weighing where to live, three implications follow. First, passport strength and quality of life are different questions: a strong passport shows how far a nationality can travel, while a country’s wellbeing shows what it is like to live there. Second, beyond a certain level of income, freedom matters more than wealth. Third, the strongest combinations often come from more than one place. 

Overall, a happy passport is rarely found in one place alone. The index points to three ways in which wellbeing, freedom and mobility come together. 

• Where all of them meet. Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland and Sweden combine the highest life evaluations in the sample with strong civil liberties and strong passports. 
• High wellbeing beyond income. Costa Rica and Uruguay pair life evaluations above what their income predicts with civil liberties among the highest in the sample. 
• Strong passports, strong foundations. Malta, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, Greece and Japan combine strong passports with long, healthy lives and, in most cases, high levels of peace. 

The answer to the question this briefing began with is therefore neither a simple yes nor a simple no. The happiest countries also hold strong passports, but beyond a certain level of income a good life depends above all on freedom, and freedom at home and the freedom to move do not always go together. 

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Appendix A

The Happy Passports Index 2026: full ranking