Young Life Evaluation in Decline: A Case Study of Norway

In 73% of the world’s countries, adults under 30 years of age report the highest life evaluation (i.e., happiness). A notable exception has emerged in North America and Northern Europe, where this pattern has reversed, with older adults reporting greater life evaluation than the young. We analyzed Gallup World Poll data from 2006–2024, covering 2.6 million respondents worldwide and 16,009 in Norway, to examine shifts in the age gap in life evaluation and their determinants. Norway is a particularly valuable case for illustrating this reversal: since ranking as the world’s happiest country in 2017, it has declined in both absolute terms and relative rankings, with national statistics revealing a pronounced well-being gap between young and old. We found that the decline in life evaluation scores in Norway largely reflects decreasing scores among young adults (18-30 years), whose scores have dropped significantly since 2017 (p < .001; d = 0.37) and are now markedly lower than those of older adults (p < .001; d = 0.41). We further confirmed that this trend is limited to a small set of countries; of all 2,508 linear correlations between age and life evaluation in different countries, 83% were negative, and only 2% were r > .10, which was the case in Norway 2022–2024. We examined potential explanations of the observed change in Norway. Only a few of the 70 variables in the Gallup World Poll seem potentially relevant for the increased age difference in life evaluations in Norway. Across multiple analyses we find the most important variables are i) stress-related factors (e.g., feeling well-rested and stress), and ii) economic standards (e.g., standard of living satisfaction and household income satisfaction). The study emphasizes the imperative for highly developed countries to prioritise the well-being of their young despite overall prosperity and high living standards.