These Are the World’s Happiest Countries in 2022

The United Nations produced the report for the 10th year in a row.

Mistervlad/Shutterstock
Mistervlad/Shutterstock

The United Nations released its 10th annual report on its ranking of the happiest countries in the world on Thursday. The report takes several factors into account, which break down into three categories: life evaluations, positive emotions, and negative emotions. The data is gathered by Gallup World Poll and used to determine where in the world people are generally the happiest.

This year, Finland ranked No. 1 in the World Happiness Report. It is the fifth year in a row that the country has landed in the top spot and scored well above the rest of the countries on the list. Denmark came in second place, Iceland in third, Switzerland in fourth, and Netherlands in fifth place. The United States, however, came in at No. 16 on the list, though that's up from 19 in 2021. And while Canada was ranked fifth in the first happiness report 10 years ago, it has since fallen to the 15th spot. 

"Data considered in the World Happiness Report offers a snapshot of how people around the world evaluate their own happiness and some of the latest insights from the science of well-being," Lara Aknin, one of the co-authors of the report, said in a press release. "This information is incredibly powerful for understanding the human condition and how to help people, communities, and countries work toward happier lives."

Below are the top 20 happiest countries in the world:

1. Finland
2. Denmark
3. Iceland
4. Switzerland
5. Netherlands
6. Luxembourg*
7. Sweden
8. Norway
9. Israel
10. New Zealand
11. Austria
12. Australia
13. Ireland
14. Germany
15. Canada
16. United States
17. United Kingdom
18. Czechia (Czech Republic)
19. Belgium
20. France

To see the complete report for 2022, including the methodology behind the ranking, read the 2022 World Happiness Report from the United Nations. Want to look back at all 10 reports? You can do that too.

Hopefully in the next report, the people in the 150 countries evaluated in this study all report being a bit happier than this year.

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Opheli Garcia Lawler is a staff writer at Thrillist. Follow her on Twitter @opheligarcia and Instagram @opheligarcia.