PETALING JAYA: Malaysia has dropped four spots to 59th in the World Happiness Report 2024.
The 2024 report surveyed a total of 143 countries.
Malaysia's position dipped compared to 2023 when it ranked 55th out of 137 countries worldwide.
Singapore, which ranked 30th in the world this year, led the list of Asian countries, followed by Taiwan (31), Japan (51), South Korea (52), Philippines (53), Vietnam (54) and Thailand (58).
Indonesia, which ranked 80th in the world and 10th in Asia, was the lowest-ranked among South-East Asian nations.
The report also placed Malaysia as the eighth happiest nation among Asian countries.
Globally, Finland emerged top place for the seventh year running, with a score of 7.741, followed by Denmark (second place), Iceland (third), Sweden (fourth), Israel (fifth), Netherlands (sixth), Norway (seventh), Luxembourg (eighth), Switzerland (ninth) and Australia (10th).
Afghanistan remains the world's unhappiest country at 143rd place.
Compiled using data from participating countries, the report is published annually by Gallup, the United Nations and the University of Oxford.
It also found Lithuania (19th globally) coming out tops for young children and people under 30 years old, while Denmark (second globally) was the happiest place to be for those over 60.
The ranking, first published in 2012, relies on respondents to scale from zero to 10 on ranking their life.
To differentiate between countries, these individual answers are compared to six variables describing participants' respective countries of origin, namely: gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity and corruption.
