Finland has one of the world's best education systems. It is seen as providing a high quality of life and being one of the world's safest countries.

And now Finland is the world's happiest country. That is according to the 2019 World Happiness Report, a global ranking released by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network for the United Nations. The report is released annually on March 20, declared by the U.N. to be International Day of Happiness.

Finland finished atop the report's rankings for the second consecutive year, and Nordic nations generally fared well. Denmark, Norway and Iceland finished in the top five, while Sweden finished at No. 7.

The report evaluates 156 countries by their happiness levels. The study, co-authored by John Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey Sachs, uses uses six metrics to develop the rankings of residents' well-being: freedom, generosity, income, trust, healthy life expectancy and social support. This year, the report focused on happiness and community. The produced for the U.N. looked at the changes in happiness levels due to multiple factors that also included information technology, governance and social norms.

Meanwhile, residents in the United States are becoming unhappier. The U.S. ranks at No. 19 in the 2019 report, dropping one position from 2018 and five from 2017. Except for income, the United States didn't finish in the top of any other metrics used to produce the happiness ranking. America ranked 12th for generosity, 37th for social support and 42nd for corruption. In addition, the United States placed 61st in terms of freedom.

"Happiness and life satisfaction among United States adolescents, which increased between 1991 and 2011, suddenly declined after 2012," wrote Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and who wrote the report's chapter on the U.S. "Thus, by 2016-17, both adults and adolescents were reporting significantly less happiness than they had in the 2000s."

In addition, depression, suicidal ideation, and self-harm reported levels have increased sharply among adolescents since 2010 and it affected girls and young women in particular, the report states.

The report also points to "an epidemic of addictions" causing Americans' reduced level of happiness. Those addictions include substance abuse, gambling, poor diets and – in a telling development in contemporary Western society – social media consumption.

Such addictions carry implications for public policy and free-market theory, the report states. "The free-market theory taught in our universities holds that consumers know what's best for them, with businesses efficiently and appropriately catering to those desires. The prevalence of addiction suggests a very different picture: that individuals may be lured into self-destructive behaviors, notably by businesses keen on boosting sales of their goods and services."

Israel is at No. 13 in the report, the United Kingdom is ranked No. 15, Ireland is at No. 16 and Germany is at No. 17. Countries torn by war finished at the bottom of the study. South Sudan finished last, followed by the Central African Republic and Afghanistan.

In a separate study published earlier this year, Finland was seen as the 10th-happiest country in the world. Spain was seen as the happiest country in the 2019 Best Countries report, a perceptions-based evaluation. The survey is based on a study that surveyed more than 20,000 global citizens from four regions to assess perceptions of 80 countries on 75 different metrics.

The Top 10 Happiest Countries:

