Gloomy Youth Pull US, Western Europe Down Happiness List

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Gloomy Youth Pull US, Western Europe Down Happiness List

Finland is the happiest country in the world - for the seventh straight year.

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Finland is the happiest country in the world - for the seventh straight year.

Denmark and Iceland follow closely behind, according to this year's World Happiness Report, released Wednesday.

Ranking last among 143 countries and territories: Afghanistan and Lebanon.

One of the report's editors, professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, who also heads the Wellbeing Research Center at the University of Oxford, said GDP per capita marks a key difference between nations' happiness, but that's not the end of the story.

"Wealth does matter, but especially also how wealth is distributed. So in Finland, Denmark and the other Scandinavian countries, you'll find that wealth is way more evenly distributed, so more people benefit from the wealth that's being generated in these countries. And then also, each one supports a welfare state that provides psychological stability,” De Neve said.

The United States dropped out of the top 20 for the first time. It fell to 23rd place from 15th last year, because of a plunge in the sense of well-being of those aged under 30.

The United Nations-backed report also shows that it's not just American youth who are unhappy.

"The main call for policy action from the World Happiness Report this year is we need to do something about these dramatic drops in youth well-being in North America and Western Europe and Britain to an extent as well," it said.

De Neve said a range of factors was likely to be at play.

Those include increased polarization over social issues, negative aspects of social media, and economic inequality that's made it harder for young people to afford their own homes than in the past.

By contrast, many of the countries with the biggest improvements in youth well-being were former communist countries in central and eastern Europe.

VOA

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