Quartz reports:

A single survey question produces the ranking most often cited as a measure of national well-being. Gallup World Poll interviewers ask people in more than 140 countries to picture a ladder numbered zero to 10. The top rung represents the best possible life for them, the bottom rung the worst. Respondents say which rung they stand on today. That question, known as the Cantril ladder, generates the scores behind the World Happiness Report. The happiest countries in the world, by this method, are the places where residents rate their own lives highest, averaged across three years of Gallup surveys.

The report’s researchers then introduce six variables to help explain why those averages differ: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceptions of corruption. Those six do not build the score. They are used to account for the gaps between countries after the fact. A nation can finish high without leading on every measure.

The results change very little from year to year. Nordic and Western European countries have filled most of the top 10 for close to a decade. Finland has held first place in every edition since the report adopted its current methodology in 2018. The pattern points away from wealth alone and toward trust. That means trust in neighbors, in police and courts, and in the expectation that a safety net will hold when work or health gives out.

This list covers the countries that turn up at or near the top across recent editions rather than the exact order of any single year. Positions shift from one report to the next. Each entry explains what the Gallup data and the report’s explanatory variables suggest about that country’s performance.

The U.S. typically lands well outside the top 10 despite recording one of the highest GDP per capita figures in the survey. [Continue reading…]