Wartime resilience: Israel is the 8th-happiest country in the world

Israel has ranked among the world’s happiest nations since 2012 despite multiple wars and regional instability.

By World Israel News Staff

Israel ranked eighth in the 2026 World Happiness Report, underscoring a general sense of life satisfaction among Israelis despite the ongoing war with Iran and more than two years of conflict triggered by Hamas’ October 7th massacres.

The report, published by the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre in partnership with Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, asks respondents to rank their overall contentment with their lives.

Since the report was first published in 2012, Israel has consistently ranked among the top countries, despite regional turbulence and repeated rounds of warfare that have roiled the country in recent years.

According to the report’s authors, factors such as a sense of charity and generosity, the strength of social connections, and the freedom to make life choices play a major role in how people evaluate their happiness.

Anat Fanti, a happiness policy researcher at the Program in Science, Technology and Society at Bar-Ilan University, told The Times of Israel that Israel’s eighth-place ranking is based on responses collected in 2023, 2024, and 2025.

“The impact of the war may only be partially reflected” in the report, Fanti said. “Israel’s high ranking does not negate the current emotional crisis but suggests that happiness indicators reflect deeper societal layers rather than the turmoil of the moment.”

She added that “Israel’s result in this year’s World Happiness Report does not erase the psychological and social cost of the war. On the contrary, it highlights the gap between the resilience of Israeli society and the difficult emotional reality of daily life.”

Fanti also noted that despite high levels of overall life satisfaction, Israelis have reported significantly higher levels of anxiety and anger since the October 7th attacks. In that category, Israel rose sharply to 39th in the world, compared to a previous ranking of 119th.