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Why are people in the United States so unhappy?

World Happiness Report 2018: See the world's 18 happiest countries

Want to be happy? The Nordic nations seem to have it all figured out.

The cold countries of northern Europe again dominated the annual World Happiness Report, released March 14. Finland ranked as the happiest country in the 2018 report, followed by Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland.

Published by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the rankings are based on people's assessments of their well-being in Gallup World Poll surveys. The top nations, the report says, "tend to have high values for all six of the key variables that have been found to support well-being: income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust and generosity."

Check out the top 18 of the 156 countries below — and see where the United States turns up.

1. Finland
2. Norway
3. Denmark
4. Iceland
5. Switzerland
6. The Netherlands
7. Canada
8. New Zealand
9. Sweden
10. Australia
11. Israel
12. Austria
13. Costa Rica
14. Ireland
15. Germany
16. Belgium
17. Luxembourg
18. United States

The United States has never made the top 10 in the happiness rankings, and this year it slid from 14th to 18th.

Report co-editor Jeffrey D. Sachs writes that "America’s subjective well-being is being systematically undermined by three interrelated epidemic diseases": obesity, substance abuse and depression.

"The U.S. is in the midst of a complex and worsening public-health crisis, involving epidemics of obesity, opioid addiction, and major depressive disorder that are all remarkable by global standards," writes Sachs, who is the Sustainable Development Solutions Network's director and a professor at Columbia University.
https://www.newsday.com/news/world/world-happiness-report-2018-1.17466485