The World Happiness Report is out, and once again Nordic countries are humming along with the highest scores. Finland has held onto its top ranking for seven years straight.

This year’s report is the first to include separate rankings by age group, and it brings bad news about life satisfaction among young people in some parts of the world.

Happiness has dropped so sharply among the young in North America that young people there are now less happy than the old. Those low scores helped push the United States out of the top 20 on the overall list for the first time since the report was first published in 2012.

The report, published March 20, the United Nations International Day of Happiness, draws on global survey data from people in more than 140 countries. Countries are ranked on happiness based on their average life evaluations over the three preceding years, in this case 2021 to 2023. The report is a partnership of Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Center, the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network and an editorial board.

The cool-weather nation of Finland — where the northern lights dance in winter and the summer sun can shine all night long — has a lot figured out when it comes to the right social conditions for happiness.

The survey asks each participant to score their life as a whole, considering what they value, said John Helliwell, emeritus professor of economics at the Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia, Canada, and a founding editor of the report.

“And you find out Finland’s pretty rich in all of those things, like wallets being returned if they’re dropped in the street, people helping each other day in and day out, very high quality and universally distributed health and education opportunities — so everyone more or less comes out of the starting gate the same,” he said. He also noted that Finland has happy immigrants too, “so it’s something that they’re prepared to share with newcomers.”

The report looks at six key variables to help explain life evaluations: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity and perceptions of corruption. Finland’s Nordic neighbors also earned reliably high scores with Denmark (No. 2), Iceland (No. 3) and Sweden (No. 4) in the top five, and Norway (No. 7) ranking in the top 10.

Given the war with Hamas, Israel may come as a surprise at No. 5, although the country has been in the top 10 since 2022. The report’s authors point out that its rankings are based on a three-year average, which often mutes the effect of “cataclysmic events happening during a particular year.”

The Netherlands (No. 6), Luxembourg (No. 8), Switzerland (No. 9) and Australia (No. 10) round out the top 10.

(SD-Agencies)