this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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Finland is named the happiest country in the world for the eighth year in a row, according to the World Happiness Report 2025 published Thursday.

Other Nordic countries are also once again at the top of the happiness rankings in the annual report published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford. Besides Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden remain the top four and in the same order.

Country rankings were based on answers people give when asked to rate their own lives. The study was done in partnership with the analytics firm Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

When it comes to decreasing happiness — or growing unhappiness —the United States has dropped to its lowest-ever position at 24, having previously peaked at 11th place in 2012. The report states that the number of people dining alone in the United States has increased 53% over the past two decades.

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[–] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 day ago

And Canada appears to have reduced happiness, I suspect due in part to our proximity to the USA.

[–] CandleTiger@programming.dev 3 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

I thought Finland and Nordic countries were notoriously depressed all winter??

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[–] MyOpinion@lemm.ee 84 points 1 day ago (3 children)

It is like being a Nazi does not make you happy. Imagine that.

[–] Embargo@lemm.ee 70 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I dunno, man. Israel being 8th is pretty fucked up.

If you had a territory where you could sort mostly the wealthy people into one "country" and mostly the poor people into another "country", you could make one really happy and one really sad country.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I'm sure if they counted the Arab population in the calculation, it would be much lower.

[–] spooky2092@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

Israel has dived head first into being Nazis and they're almost all fucking about it. They're just happy they get to ~~exterminate the jews~~ be the ones doing the extermination this time.

The 'problem' the US has is only 1/3 of us have embraced being nazis, while another 1/3 doesn't give a shit.

[–] Mniot@programming.dev 5 points 1 day ago

There's substantial Israelis who aren't calling for genocide. But it's like the US after 9-11 and they've mostly gone into hiding because the right-wing media presence is so overpowering and successful on the "with us or against us" message.

[–] LNRDrone@sopuli.xyz 24 points 1 day ago

Maybe it's more of a oh shit I have to appear happy with everything or the Israel gestapo will get me kind of thing. The human element on these things means there's always some amount of bending the truth or out right bullshit in the data they use for this.

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[–] kerchow@lemm.ee 8 points 1 day ago (4 children)

The United States is still at 24th, where do they rank amongst first world countries?

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[–] taiyang@lemmy.world 32 points 1 day ago

That's what you get when everyone has a sauna.

And yes, many homes have it and one thing my Finnish friend does is sauna up and then jump in the snow. That'll wake you up.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] LNRDrone@sopuli.xyz 16 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I'm convinced Finns have just found a way to troll this somehow. Not that Finland isn't great and all, but it just makes more sense.

[–] SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

According to the other comments, they ask "How are you?" ans the response is "eVeRyThInG Is gReAt" and this gets written down as a 5/5 on the happiness scale.

[–] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No, it's because things are all things considered pretty good here, so people say "can't complain". Things overall are pretty good. Some understand happiness as being giddy about life but what this ranking more about is how content you're with your life and when things are overall alright, it's easy to be content.

The happiness thing is misleading since what it means varies a lot culture to culture.

[–] SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

“can’t complain”

That would never work around here. We complain about everything. And then we'll complain how much everybody is complaining. Our happy state is complaining.

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