The World Happiness Report 2025 is out!
Finland leads the world in happiness for the eighth year in a row, with Finns reporting an average score of 7.736 (out of 10) when asked to evaluate their lives.
Costa Rica (6th) and Mexico (10th) both enter the top 10 for the first time, while continued upward trends for countries such as Lithuania (16th), Slovenia (19th) and Czechia (20th) underline the convergence of happiness levels between Eastern, Central and Western Europe.
The United States (24th) falls to its lowest-ever position, with the United Kingdom (23rd) reporting its lowest average life evaluation since the 2017 report.
I bang this drum a lot, but it does genuinely appear that once a country reaches the upper-middle income bracket, GDP doesn’t seem to matter much more.
Also featuring is a chapter from the Happier Lives Institute, where they compare the cost-effectiveness of improving wellbeing across multiple charities. They find that the top charities (including Pure Earth and Tamaika) might be 100x as cost-effective as others, especially those in high-income countries.
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Per Bloomberg, the Trump administration is considering restricting the equivalency determination for 501(c)3s as early as Tuesday. The equivalency determination allows for 501(c)3s to regrant money to foreign, non-tax-exempt organisations while maintaining tax-exempt status, so long as an attorney or tax practitioner claims the organisation is equivalent to a local tax-exempt one.
I’m not an expert on this, but it sounds really bad. I guess it remains to be seen if they go through with it.
Regardless, the administration is allegedly also preparing to directly strip environmental and political (i.e. groups he doesn’t like, not necessarily just any policy org) non-profits of their tax exempt status. In the past week, he’s also floated trying to rescind the tax exempt status of Harvard. From what I understand, such an Executive Order is illegal under U.S. law (to whatever extent that matters anymore), unless Trump instructs the State Department to designate them foreign terrorist organisations, at which point all their funds are frozen too.
These are dark times. Stay safe 🖤