Is Singapore really Asia’s happiest country? UN report sheds light on age divide

While the latest edition of an annual UN-sponsored report found Singapore to be Asia’s happiest country for the second year in a row, its survey data showed that the city state’s younger citizens rated their quality of life significantly worse than older generations.

One sociologist attributed the report’s generational disparity to younger people feeling the so-called Singapore Dream was now “less easily accessible” to them than their parents’ generation.

The 2024 edition of the World Happiness Report’s rankings are based on surveys, taken by around 1,000 respondents per country from 2021-2023, in which they rated their quality of life on a scale of 0 to 10. The rankings also take into account other factors such as GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, generosity and perception of corruption.

Out of the 143 countries surveyed, the top 5 in the report’s ranking are, in descending order, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Israel.

Singapore fell five spots from last year’s report to place 30th in the global rankings, but still kept its crown as the happiest among all Asian countries included in the survey.

Singapore has fared well in a number of other studies on liveability. In a separate 2023 report put together by global consulting firm Mercer, the city state was ranked the 29th best country in the world for expats out of the 241 countries surveyed, putting it above any other country in Asia. Hong Kong, by comparison, was ranked 77th.

The editor of the World Happiness Report, Wang Shun, told CNBC that Singapore had done “very well in terms of GDP per capita, one of the highest ranking in our data set”.

Shun also noted that Singaporeans have “a very low perception of corruption … even lower than