Israel is one of the happiest countries in the world despite devastating war, persecution 

With thousands dead and hundreds of hostages missing during the Israel-Gaza War, Israel remained in the top 10 happiest countries in the world, according to World Population Review.

The World Happiness Index ranks 140 countries based on self-reported evaluations through Gallup surveys. The index measures “gross domestic product per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity and perceptions of corruption.”

The scores are then calculated using a “hypothetical ‘Dystopia’ baseline” – the lowest values for all factors – to compare all countries to the same standard.

Israel ranked eighth on the happiest scale in 2026, according to results released in March.

“It doesn’t surprise me because Israelis have a sense of meaning and purpose, which contributes to their overall satisfaction with life,” Anat Fanti, a happiness policy researcher at the Program in Science, Technology and Society at Bar-Ilan University, told The Times of Israel.

This “sense of meaning and purpose” correlates with Israel’s likewise high fertility rate.

“Having a meaning in life is a lot easier once you’re married and once you have children,” Ethics and Public Policy Center Visiting Fellow Alexander Raikin told Heartlander News in an interview.

Israel remained in eighth place from 2025 to 2026 on the happiness report, but in 2023 and 2024, the country ranked fourth and fifth, respectively. According to the report, the survey responses occurred after October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists flooded into Israel, murdering thousands of Israelis and capturing hundreds.

“We cannot take for granted the population’s resilience in the face of such difficult years,” Fanti said. “The 2026 report shows that Israeli society is still very strong.”

Additionally, Gen Z Israelis, under the age of 25, ranked as the third happiest of demographic groups, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Israel’s fertility rate remains strong

Not only has Israel remained in the top 10 worldwide for happiness levels, but the country also maintained a fertility rate well above other wealthy countries. In fact, after October 7, the fertility rate seemingly increased. The numbers of reported births among Jewish women from 2023 to 2025 were about 131,100, 134,500, and 135,700, respectively, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics report.

The report also lists the number of births per month, and the 2024 data reveals a small drop in Jewish births in June – roughly nine months after October 7, 2023. But the numbers picked right back up and continually increased through the fall of 2024, topping 12,000 births in December. In 2023, monthly births peaked at 11,644 in January.

While the differences are mere hundreds, the data shows Jewish families continued having babies despite the tragedy and subsequent war, and some may have even had more than planned. The fertility rate of Jewish women has remained relatively stable and is about twice the rate among Druze or Christian women and 0.4 children higher than Muslim women, according to the Taub Center.

“Despite a war that seems never ending, you know that Israel is so happy. I think because of the pro-natalist culture,” Raikin told Heartlander News. “Individuals in Israel are much more likely to be married than in America. They’re much more likely to have kids.”

Following the pack: more babies

Israel’s keen happiness and fertility rates should be credited to cultural and societal communities, not government policies or even financial stability, he said.

“People were having children even when individuals and families were much poorer,” Raikin explained. “So I don’t think economics can explain all of it, or even most of it, and I do think that the hardest answers are those that cannot be signed into law easily.”

Instead, Raikin cited local communities and the influence of friends or acquaintances. Marriage and family cannot be manufactured, he said.

“Israel did not get where it is by discovering a secret line item in the budget,” he wrote in a piece in February. “It got there because large, overlapping communities still treat family formation as the default life path, not as an eccentric lifestyle choice. People grow up assuming they will marry. They grow up assuming they will have children. They see it modeled by friends, siblings, neighbors, and co-workers. And then most of the time they do it themselves.”

Young adults who are around other young adults getting married and starting families are more likely to prioritize these steps as well, he explained. So, fertility and happiness rely far less on policies and economics and far more on culture, Raikin argues. While religion and politics certainly inform culture, the individual communities have far greater impact on an individual, he said.

“It is culture, transmitted through social networks and reinforced by everyday norms,” he wrote. “The choice to be married, to have children and not to choose abortion are all tied together.”

Israel’s present-day communities, however, derive from the Jews’ extensive shared cultural history as a people.

“In Jerusalem, history is not something you read about – it’s something you live inside,” Stephen M. Flatow wrote in the Times of Israel. “Every stone tells a story. Every alleyway echoes with memory. For those of us who believe in the unfolding of Biblical prophecy, there is an added dimension: the quiet, constant awareness that we are witnessing something our ancestors only dreamed of.”

This unified identity provides another shared purpose that structures Israelis’ customs and amiability, whether religious or not.

“In much of the Western world, happiness is often tied to comfort, convenience and personal ease,” Flatow wrote. “In Israel, it is tied to belonging, purpose and continuity. It is rooted in the knowledge that you are part of a story that began long before you – and will continue long after you.”