Finland tops U.N. World Happiness Report for 5th year in a row, U.S. comes in 16th

The United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network released its 10th annual World Happiness Report on Friday, CNN reported.

According to NPR, the study asks approximately 1,000 respondents from each country to assess their lives on a scale of zero to 10, "with zero being the worst possible life they could have expected to have, and 10 being the best."

Nordic countries continued to dominate the rankings. Finland topped the list for the fifth consecutive year, with an average life evaluation of 7.821. Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and Norway also made the top 10.

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NPR, however, points out that some Nordic commentators suggest Scandinavians report high levels of satisfaction not because "of the country's sterling quality of life, but because people in those countries have a lower bar for what they think their best possible life could have been."

Writing for The Week in 2017, James Pethokoukis argued that Americans, by contrast, "are demanding, complain when dissatisfied, and, by the way, also produce the hard-driving entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates who push the technological frontier so Europe doesn't have to."

The United States ranked 16th in the 2022 report with a score of 6.977, between Canada (15th) and the United Kingdom (17th).