By Joe Pinsker

Since 2012, most of the humans on Earth have been given a nearly annual reminder that there are entire nations of people who are measurably happier than they are. This uplifting yearly notification is known as the World Happiness Report.

With the release of each report, which is published by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the question is not which country will appear at the top of the rankings, but rather which Northern European country will. Finland has been the world’s happiest country for four years running; Denmark and Norway hold all but one of the other titles (which went to Switzerland in 2015).

The rankings are reliably discouraging for Americans, who have never cracked the global top 10. We are merely in the upper middle class of happiness—respectable, but underwhelming for a country with our level of wealth and self-regard.

Sort of like how the launch of Sputnik in 1957 led Americans to feel like their country was falling behind technologically, or how the results of international standardized tests in the 2000s led them to feel like their kids were falling behind educationally, the happiness rankings have subtly encouraged an anxiety fit for our era of self-optimization: that somewhere, other people are doing things that make them much happier than we are.

This disturbing thought has contributed to the rise of a genre of lifestyle content that aims to help unhappy Americans emulate the daily practices and philosophies of happier places, whether that means taking a dip in frigid wateror making your living room super-cozy. Wanting to copy the happiest people in the world is an understandable impulse, but it distracts from a key message of the happiness rankings—that equitable, balanced societies make for happier residents. In the process, a research-heavy, policy-oriented document gets mistaken, through a terrible global game of telephone, for a trove of self-help advice.

Happier isn’t quite the right word for how the Finns compare with the rest of the world—the World Happiness Report is more about contentment than exuberant, smiley happiness. Its rankings are based on each country’s average response to a question that goes something like this: If you imagine a ladder whose rungs are numbered zero to 10, and zero represents your worst possible life and 10 represents your best, which rung would you be on? (Posing this question to at least 1,000 people in 150 or so countries is a resource-intensive undertaking. Gallup, which provides the survey data behind the rankings, declined to tell me the cost of collecting them as part of the Gallup World Poll, but if you’d like, you can buy access to that broader data set for $30,000 a year.)

The UN first took an interest in people’s imaginary life-ladders 10 years ago, after Bhutan’s prime minister at the time, Jigme Thinley, encouraged the organization’s member countries to better incorporate well-being into measurements of social and economic development. His recommendation inspired the first World Happiness Report, released in 2012.

The happiness rankings are a useful countervailing force in a world that tends to take GDP as a proxy for a country’s success, and in the past five years, some governments have launched initiatives dedicated to their citizens’ life satisfaction: The United Kingdom appointed a minister for loneliness, the United Arab Emirates appointed a minister of happiness, and New Zealand reviewed its national budget based on how government spending would affect people’s well-being.

For the people who come up with policies and run countries, the lessons of the report are not shocking: People are more satisfied with their lives when they have a comfortable standard of living, a supportive social network, good health, the latitude to choose their course in life, and a government they trust. The highest echelon of happy countries also tends to have universal health care, ample paid vacation time, and affordable child care.

A central takeaway from nine years of happiness reports is that a wealthier country is not always a happier country. In the U.S., “we are living with such incredibly frayed social trust and bad vibes and addictions and so many other things, and still [people say] ‘Don't tax me,’ ‘Don’t tax the rich,’” Jeffrey Sachs, an economist at Columbia University and an editor of the report, told me. “This is part of our politics that I think is all wrong, and that I think is what puts us well behind countries that are not quite as rich as the United States but in my view are much more balanced in their lives.”

Less clear is what an individual person should make of a list of the world’s happiest countries. Sure, it may yield some abstract wisdom about the good life: Sachs views it as a reminder that once you’re comfortable materially, moderation is a healthier attitude than chasing more money and possessions.

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