In recent years, global and national studies have been increasingly focused not only on economic performance but also on the psychological and social wellbeing of individuals and societies. In this context, two important research directions come to the fore:
The World Happiness Report: a long-established global indicator of subjective life satisfaction across countries.
The Index of Individual Resilience (IIR) of Solvo Institute: a new approach examining how individuals and societies manage uncertainty, stress and change.
Together, these two research approaches provide a complementary view of how people experience their lives and how they cope with challenges.
What the World Happiness Report tells us
The World Happiness Report is an annually published, internationally recognised study that compares countries according to how happy their inhabitants feel. It is based on data from the Gallup World Poll. Key indicators include life satisfaction ratings (on a scale of 0–10), factors associated with happiness such as GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity and perceptions of corruption, and long-term data enabling tracking of developments over time.
Life satisfaction ratings (three-year average) in 2024:
Slovakia: 6.221 (50th place) · Sweden: 7.345 (4th place) · Czech Republic: 6.775 (20th place) · Germany: 6.753 (22nd place)
Why it is important to connect these two perspectives
Happiness and resilience are both important indicators of a thriving society, but they answer different questions. While the World Happiness Report focuses on how people evaluate their lives and how they feel subjectively, the Resilience Index tracks the resources and capabilities that enable people to manage stress and life challenges.
Sweden shows a consistently high and remarkably stable level of life satisfaction, which barely changed between 2011 (7.379), 2019 (7.354) and 2024 (7.345). The Czech Republic shows a different trend: a marked improvement between 2011 (6.360) and 2019 (6.911), followed by a slight decline to 6.775 in 2024. Slovakia shows a similar development — improvement from 5.657 in 2011 to 6.281 in 2019, followed by a slight decline to 6.221 in 2024. Germany recorded the most significant decline after 2019: after rising to 7.076 in 2019, the rating fell to 6.753 in 2024.
Factors behind differences in happiness and resilience
In 2024, the contribution of perceived freedom to make life choices was significantly higher in the Czech Republic (0.916) than in Slovakia (0.704). Similarly, healthy life expectancy contributed 0.658 in the Czech Republic compared to 0.547 in Slovakia. These results suggest that the difference in subjective life satisfaction between the two countries is driven less by material conditions and more by a sense of personal autonomy and health factors.
Slovakia achieves the lowest overall resilience score (average IIR = 97) of the four countries studied and shows weaker results particularly in social cohesion and trust. Only 14% of respondents in Slovakia agree that "most people can be trusted", compared to 27% in the Czech Republic, 30% in Germany and 39% in Sweden.
The share of respondents who exercise at least three times a week reaches 44% in the Czech Republic, a value close to Sweden (46%) and significantly higher than Slovakia (31%). A healthy lifestyle may thus represent an important compensatory source of resilience in the Czech context.
Of all countries analysed, Sweden shows the strongest alignment between high life satisfaction and high resilience. It achieves the highest overall resilience score (average IIR = 104) and excels particularly in institutional trust and adaptive skills. Knowledge of English as "good" is reported by 85% of respondents in Sweden, compared to 54% in Germany, 33% in the Czech Republic and 27% in Slovakia.
Germany shows a somewhat different profile. Resilience data suggest a possible explanation in the area of mental health: the share of respondents with a psychological or psychiatric diagnosis requiring treatment reaches 14% in Germany, compared to 12% in Sweden, 7% in the Czech Republic and 6% in Slovakia.
Connecting happiness and resilience
The comparison of World Happiness Report results and the Index of Individual Resilience shows the complementary nature of both approaches. The WHR primarily measures outcomes and macro-structural correlates of wellbeing, while the IIR captures the micro-level capabilities of individuals to manage stress and adapt to change.
Several conceptual parallels can be identified between the two approaches. Material security in the IIR corresponds to the economic GDP pillar in the WHR. Physical health and lifestyle relate to the healthy life expectancy indicator. Social cohesion and support networks correspond to the social support dimension, while trust in institutions relates to perceptions of corruption and quality of governance.
Although these indicators are not identical, they reflect overlapping dimensions of societal wellbeing and resilience.