Life satisfaction in selected European Union countries 2013-2022

Life satisfaction in the European Union has seen a general downward trend since 2018, with the score recorded for the EU as a whole declining from 7.3 out of 10 to 7.1 out of 10 in 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic and related public health restrictions are likely to be behind much of this trend, as life satisfaction tended to decrease due to the isolating effects of lockdowns, while the economic conditions such as historically high inflation have also led to dissatisfaction in the years since the beginning of the pandemic. Germany, in particular, has seen a dramatic decline in its citizens' evaluations of their own life satisfaction, as Germans' life satisfaction score declined from 7.4 in 2018, the highest of all the included countries in that year, to 6.5 in 2022. The country's economy has struggled with stagflation in the aftermath of the pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, while political and social polarization has also been a growing problem in Germany during the early 2020s.