Today is the International Day of Happiness. So like every year on March 20, you are likely to see a lot of headlines about the publication of the annual World Happiness Report. “Finland is again ranked the happiest country in the world [while] the US falls to its lowest-ever position,” ran a headline from the Associated Press this morning. Forbes even got philosophical, promising “5 Life Lessons From Finland, Once Again the ‘World’s Happiest Country.’ ”
Published by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network and the Wellbeing Research Centre at Oxford University, the basic message of the report has remained the same since its launch in 2012. The happiest countries in the world are in Scandinavia; this year, Finland is followed by Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden. America, despite being one of the richest large countries in the world, persistently underperforms: this year, the United States only comes in 24th out of the 147 countries covered in the report, placing it behind much poorer countries like Lithuania and Costa Rica.
I have to admit that I have been skeptical about this ranking ever since I first came across it. Because I have family in both Sweden and Denmark, I have spent a good amount of time in Scandinavia. And while Scandinavian countries have a lot of great things going for them, they never struck me as pictures of joy. For much of the year, they are cold and dark. Their cultures are extremely reserved and socially disjointed. When you walk around the—admittedly beautiful—centers of Copenhagen or Stockholm, you rarely see anybody smile. Could these really be the happiest places in the whole wide world?