Spiritual Wellbeing in the World Happiness Report 2025

While not a central focus, the World Happiness Report 2025 acknowledges spiritual wellbeing as an important dimension of human flourishing. The Global Flourishing Study (GFS) dataset—used in the report—includes measures of spirituality and religion alongside health, psychological, and economic variables. Additionally, referenced studies highlight how spiritual capital is linked to life satisfaction, particularly among volunteers, and how spirituality contributes to improved health outcomes, emotional resilience, and longevity. Though not deeply analysed in the core chapters, these inclusions reflect growing recognition of spirituality’s role in shaping overall wellbeing.

Here are the key references to spiritual wellbeing in the World Happiness Report 2025:

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1. Global Flourishing Study (GFS) Dataset Coverage

“The GFS covers a robust set of measures on wellbeing, health, social, economic, political, religious, spiritual, psychological, and demographic variables.”
— World Happiness Report 2025, p. 128​

This confirms that spiritual variables are included in the data used for cross-national analyses of wellbeing, though the report does not detail specific findings on spiritual wellbeing in the main discussion.

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2. Spiritual Capital and Volunteering

“Life satisfaction among healthcare volunteers in Malaysia: Role of personality factors, volunteering motives, and spiritual capital.”
— Cited in the reference list: Veerasamy, C., et al. (2015)
— World Happiness Report 2025, p. 56​

This shows spiritual capital is acknowledged in academic studies linking spirituality to wellbeing, though the report references this as part of the broader literature rather than its core findings.

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3. Spirituality/Religiousness and Health Outcomes

“The Ironson-Woods Spirituality/Religiousness Index is associated with long survival, health behaviors, less distress, and low cortisol in people with HIV/AIDS.”
— Ironson et al. (2002), cited in the report’s references
— World Happiness Report 2025, p. 55​

Again, spirituality is tied to physical and emotional wellbeing in scientific literature, which the report includes in its broader evidence base.

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While these references confirm that spirituality and spiritual wellbeing are included as variables and considered in cited studies, the report itself does not extensively analyse or discuss spiritual wellbeing as a separate dimension in the main chapters.