Infographic: How Was 2024? Not as Bad as the Last Few Years (2025)

Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic turned the world upside down in 2020, it seems like the world has been in constant crisis mode. In each of the past few years, the overwhelming feeling towards the end of December has been: the next year can only get better.

With the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East dragging on, the effects of the global cost of living crisis still lingering and political upheaval in countries like France, Germany and South Korea, 2024 offered enough reasons to be downbeat about the state of the world once again. And yet, according to a recent Ipsos survey, people were slightly less gloomy at the end of 2024 than they have been for the past four years.

65 percent of the 23,721 adults surveyed across 33 countries said that 2024 was a bad year for their country and 51 percent said that the year had been bad for them and their family. While that sounds pretty bleak, it still marks an improvement over the past four years, with global “optimism” rising to the highest level since 2019.

The change in mood was particularly noticeable in Argentina, Sweden, Belgium, Poland and China, with each of the five countries seeing double-digit decreases in the share of people saying the year had been bad for their country. At the other end of the scale, countries like India, South Korea, France and Mexico saw the mood worsen in 2024 compared to 12 months ago.

Overall, the picture is still pretty grim, with more than 70 percent of respondents saying that 2024 had been a bad year for their country in South Korea, France, Great Britain, Canada, Germany and India, among others. Of the 33 countries included in the survey, just three saw a majority disagreeing that the year has been bad: Singapore, Switzerland and China.