Canada’s Happiness Plunge: Among The Worst Places For Young Adults

Canada’s days of being one of the happiest countries in the world have gone the way of Zellers. The newly released 2026 World Happiness Report reveals Canada’s plunge from the Top 10 is accelerating. The country has seen the sharpest decline of any advanced economy, and ranks among the worst places in the world for youth happiness, as a generational failure locks young adults out of traditional benchmarks of success. 

About The Report

The World Happiness Report, published annually by Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre in partnership with Gallup and the UN, scores over 140 countries on a 0-10 scale for wellbeing. Researchers analyze explanatory factors that include social supports, GDP per capita, freedom, and perceptions of corruption to help account for the changes. It’s peer-reviewed, multi-institutional research—14 years running, with contributions from academic institutions around the world, including Canadian universities UBC and SFU. This isn’t a tabloid poll run by PR firms. It’s actual data. 

Canada Falls Out of Top 20, Fastest Drop Among Advanced Economies  

Canada ranked in the Top 10 happiest countries until 2018, but had plunged to 25th in 2025—a long way from the 6th spot it held just a decade prior. Its score fell 0.736 points in the latest report, marking the sharpest decline of any advanced economy. For context, the drop ranks just behind the conflict region of DR Congo. 

Most Western Industrial countries are less happy than they were between 2006 and 2010, but Canada stands out. It isn’t just having a couple of bad years, but it’s showing a sharp and persistent erosion. Of 136 countries tracked, 79 posted significant gains from 2006-2010 to 2023-2025. Just 41 posted losses, and Canada is the outlier among developed nations. 

However, the national numbers are hiding the real crisis. Young adults are taking a much more serious hit. 

Canada Is Among The Worst Places For Young Adults

Countries ranked by happiness and age cohort.

Source: World Happiness Report; Better Dwelling.

Not all Canadians are impacted equally—its young adults are facing a generational crisis. The survey breaks out happiness amongst young adults (25 and under), showing those in Canada have plunged 1.138 points. Canada now ranks 71 for global youth happiness, while “the rest” of the country ranks 24th. Its drop is among the sharpest in the world—only Malawi, Lebanon, and Afghanistan saw sharper declines. Yes, the only three countries include one with a 70% poverty rate, one with a regional conflict, and one literally run by the Taliban.

Canada isn’t alone, but its erosion is among the sharpest in what researchers call NANZ—short for North America and New Zealand, but it includes Canada, the US, Australia, and New Zealand. NANZ countries ranked between 122 and 133 out of 136 countries for change in youth happiness. Canada’s erosion is roughly double the drop seen in Australia (-0.623 points) and 4x that of Western Europe (-0.3 points). This isn’t a global trend—the opposite is being observed globally.

“We find striking differences in how the young have fared. In 85 of 136 countries, the under-25s are happier now (2023–2025) than they were twenty years ago (2006–2010),” write the researchers. “There are two main conclusions from our investigations thus far. The first is that we have confirmed our 2024 finding that subjective wellbeing of the young has fallen dramatically since 2011 in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with very limited evidence of corresponding changes elsewhere.”

The grouping of NANZ is particularly interesting in this context, as these countries aren’t geographically grouped together. These countries only have a common language, similar political priorities and policies. If most of the world is improving for youth while this group erodes, the pain is coming from inside the house. 

Canada’s Youth Are Locked Out of The Economy

The erosion in youth happiness is largely due to a lack of economic progress, especially in Canada. GDP per capita and purchasing power are foundational drivers of happiness. Not because young people are money grubbing sink-holes, but they’re been locked out of what the researchers called “traditional measures of progress.” Marriage, stable employment, and homeownership are inaccessible. The data reveals the erosion intensified with each generation—Millennials were hit harder than Gen X, Gen Z the hardest (yet). 

Without access to these markers of progress, researchers note that young adults have turned to social media. This is facilitating a pivot to more “immediate and symbolic indicators of success, including luxury consumption, career mobility, and online visibility.” 

While it’s easy to conclude social media is the problem, that misses the point. Latin American countries have high social media use and high youth wellbeing. French-speaking Quebec, one of Canada’s more affordable provinces, shows a far less dramatic decline. 

The researchers confirm it: “Latin American countries combine high levels of social media use with high youth wellbeing, while English-speaking countries show lower youth wellbeing than their fairly typical patterns of internet use can explain.”

Social media is a symptom, not the cause. The English-speaking world is paying for a post-2008 financial architecture that benefited older generations at the expense of young ones.