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.
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.
Like they just lie on the Gallup poll calls so they seem less suicidal?
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.
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.
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.
It’s more of a phrase that just means “I guess things are pretty okay, considered”. People say “can’t complain” and then immediately before and after complain hah
It’s easy to be content with life when things are overall pretty good. And Finns typically are happy with fairly little, so we rank high.