Global ‘happiness gap’ shows Mexico way outpacing the US — here’s why

President Donald Trump often portrays Mexico as a disastrous country overrun by drug cartels and “bad hombres.”

But a newly released global ranking of life satisfaction tells a different story: Mexicans report being significantly happier than Americans.

The 2026 World Happiness Ranking, coordinated by the University of Oxford, is considered the gold standard of global life-satisfaction studies.

It’s largely based on a Gallup poll asking people in 147 countries how close they feel to living their “best possible life,” on a scale from 0 to 10.

This year, as in the past eight years, Finland ranked No. 1 as the happiest country, followed by Iceland and Denmark.

But the biggest surprises were Costa Rica, Israel and Mexico, all of which ranked among the world’s 12 happiest countries.

Costa Rica ranked fourth — the highest ever for a Latin American country — while Israel came in eighth and Mexico 12th.

Further down the list are the United States (23), Brazil (32), Spain (41), Argentina (44), Chile (50), China (65), Colombia (68), Peru (72), Russia (79) and Venezuela (80).

At the very bottom: Afghanistan (147).

Cuba and Nicaragua, incidentally, don’t even appear: According to the researchers, the dictatorships in those countries blocked Gallup from conducting its surveys freely.

Scandinavian countries top the list almost every year, thanks to high living standards, universal health care, good education and strong institutions.

And something else that often goes unnoticed: a vibrant community life.

I saw this first-hand while reporting in Finland and Denmark a few years ago for a book on the world’s happiest countries.

Scheduling interviews after 4 pm was nearly impossible: People were off to film clubs, cooking classes or stamp-collecting groups.

In Denmark, laws require schools and public offices to open their doors to social clubs free of charge after hours.

The government even provides these clubs a small stipend to buy sandwiches and clean up their meeting rooms.

Community, in Scandinavia, is not an afterthought — it’s policy.

Mariano Rojas, a professor at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Mexico and one of the study’s authors, said Costa Rica ranks highly thanks in part to the “relational warmth” of its people.

“Costa Ricans say they’re very satisfied with their lives,” Rojas told me.

“They have that warmth we see in other Latin American countries, but Costa Rica manages to combine it with a rather robust welfare state” that provides good, free health care and education.

Israel’s case is similar.

Despite the war and the Hamas terrorist attack in 2023 — the deadliest massacre of Jews since the 1940-1945 Nazi Holocaust — Israel ranks among the happiest countries in the world because of strong family ties and a shared sense of purpose to survive as a people, Rojas noted.

As for Mexico, he added, happiness is rooted in human connection.

“Extended families, the famous parties, the neighborhood gatherings — all of that fosters a sense of sharing one’s life with others,” Rojas said.

“It creates an atmosphere of happiness built not on economics, but on relationships.”

Asked why many Mexicans migrate to the United States, other authors of the report told me that the percentage of people who leave Mexico is small relative to the country’s population — and many of those who leave, they said, want to return.

In the United States, life satisfaction has declined steadily in recent years.

US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared a national “epidemic of loneliness and isolation” in 2023, and things haven’t improved much since.

According to the new World Happiness report, part of the decline in US life satisfaction is linked to young Americans’ addiction to social media, which is driving up anxiety and depression among them.

Among people under 25, the United States, Canada and Australia rank among the world’s most unhappy countries, the report shows.

My conclusion? Wealthier countries tend to be happier — because if people have nothing to eat, they can’t be happy.

But economic prosperity is not enough to bring happiness.

If it were, the United States and Saudi Arabia would top the rankings — and they don’t.

To boost happiness, a strong community life is essential, as we see in countries as diverse as Finland, Costa Rica, Israel and Mexico.

Money helps, but it’s not enough.

Andres Oppenheimer covers Latin American policy and economic issues in “The Oppenheimer Report.”