Immigrants walk to a makeshift customs checkpoint in Tornio, Finland. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post) 
 
 President Trump has not made America happier again. 
 
 For the second consecutive year, the United States has taken a tumble in the World Happiness Report’s annual ranking of more than 150 countries, published by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, an initiative of the United Nations. 
 
 The 2018 report was released Wednesday, ahead of the United Nations’ International Day of Happiness, and it has the United States ranked 18th. 
 
 That is down four spots from a year ago — and the United States' worst showing since the annual report was introduced in 2012. The United States has never cracked the top 10. 
 
 Finland is No. 1, edging out Norway, the 2017 champion. Denmark was third, followed by Iceland and Switzerland. 
 
 The bottom three in the 156-nation list were Burundi, the Central African Republic and South Sudan — all of which have struggled with conflict and instability. 
 
 As immigration continues to play a major role in elections around the world, the report’s authors wanted to know how the feelings of migrants change once they arrive in their adopted homeland. 
 
 They were surprised at what the data showed. 
 
 “The most striking finding is the extent to which happiness of immigrants matches the locally born population,” John Helliwell, a University of British Columbia economist who co-edited the report, told The Washington Post. “The happiest countries in the world also have the happiest immigrants in the world.” 
 
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 Why measure happiness? Some experts say that it is a better measure of a nation’s progress and that using social well-being as a goal drives better public policy, according to the report. 
 
 The statisticians weighed six variables, according to the report: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, social freedom, generosity and absence of corruption. The data was compiled from the Gallup World Poll, which uses a measure called the “Cantril ladder.” 
 
 People are asked to envision a ladder, with their “best possible life” being a 10 on the top rung. Their worst possible life is a 0. 
 
 Data harvested from the surveys from 2005 to 2015 suggest that immigrants find happiness — and find it quickly — in their adopted countries, Helliwell said. The three happiest countries for the foreign-born mirror findings for the native-born: Finland again takes the top spot, and Denmark and Norway swapped places to become two and three. 
 
 How migrants arrive and how welcome they are once they do can be tied to several factors, according to the report. Moderate flows of migrants were more tolerable for the native-born than big influxes of new arrivals, and unskilled immigrants tend to rattle unskilled native workers fearful of being displaced. 
 
 “The attitude of immigrants is also important — if they are to find and accept opportunities to connect with the local populations, this is better for everyone,” the report found. 
 
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 In 2017, no country fell farther on the Cantril ladder than Venezuela. Civil unrest, severe hunger and a failed economy have triggered a mass exodus described as a humanitarian crisis. 
 
 Last year, Venezuela was 82nd in the World Happiness Report. This year? 102nd. 
 
 There were common threads to most of the top-ranked countries on the list. Income is the biggest factor; the GDP per capita in the top 10 nations is 30 times as high as it is in the bottom 10 countries. But Helliwell said that does not always translate to happiness among individuals. Belonging and respect in civil society also play vital roles. 
 
 “It’s the human things that matter. If the riches make it harder to have frequent and trustworthy relationship between people, is it worth it?” Helliwell asked rhetorically after last year’s report. “The material can stand in the way of the human.” 
 
 And human beings in America have contributed to eroding happiness here in recent years, the study found. 
 
 Obesity, substance abuse (including opioid abuse) and depression offset the happiness that often comes with the kind of economic growth the United States has seen since 1972, the report said. Those factors contribute to a drop in life expectancy at birth “nearly unprecedented for a high-income country in peacetime.” 
 
 Corporate lobbying and deregulation have allowed pharmaceutical companies to drown the country in opioids, and high medical costs curb the ability for many people to seek treatment for depression, the report said. 
 
 But more issues are at work in the United States. 
 
 “Social support networks in the U.S. have weakened over time; perceptions of corruption in government and business have risen over time; and confidence in public institutions has waned,” the report said. 
 
 Helliwell said happier countries tend to spend more time thinking about extending advantages to future generations. For instance, Norway has conserved its vast oil reserves and has invested revenue, he said, insulating the economy from erratic energy prices, which contributed to Venezuela’s instability. 
 
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 “To do this successfully requires high levels of mutual trust, shared purpose, generosity and good governance, all factors that help to keep Norway and other top countries where they are in the happiness rankings,” the report found last year. 
 
 If the United States and other countries want positive examples, they should look to Latin America, the report suggests. 
 
 The region is beset by lower confidence in institutions, vast income disparities and some of the world’s most violent cities because of the global drug trade. 
 
 And yet ... 
 
 “High happiness in Latin America is neither an anomaly nor an oddity,” the report says. “It is explained by the abundance of family warmth and other supportive social relationships frequently sidelined in favor of an emphasis on income. ... Relationships are important for people’s happiness; and ... positive relationships are abundant in Latin America.” 
 
 Last year's World Happiness Report included a chapter called “Restoring American Happiness.” 
 
 The author of that chapter, economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, said America’s declining happiness is “a social crisis, not an economic crisis,” writing: “This American social crisis is widely noted, but it has not translated into public policy. Almost all of the policy discourse in Washington DC centers on naive attempts to raise the economic growth rate, as if a higher growth rate would somehow heal the deepening divisions and angst in American society. This kind of growth-only agenda is doubly wrong-headed.” 
 
 Sachs told Reuters that Trump’s policies would only make things worse. 
 
 This year, as the report shifted its social focus to immigrants and Latin America, Sachs turned his attention to the health epidemic in the United States. 
 
 
 
 President Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Marine One on Tuesday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) 
 
 Amy B Wang contributed to this report. 
 
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 The first World Happiness Report was published in April, 2012, in support of the UN High Level Meeting on happiness and well-being. Since then the world has come a long way. Increasingly, happiness is considered to be the proper measure of social progress and the goal of public policy. In June 2016 the OECD committed itself “to redefine the growth narrative to put people’s well-being at the center of governments’ efforts”. In February 2017, the United Arab Emirates held a full-day World Happiness meeting, as part of the World Government Summit. Now on World Happiness Day, March 20th, we launch the World Happiness Report 2017, once again back at the United Nations, again published by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and now supported by a generous three-year grant from the Ernesto Illy Foundation. 
 
 Norway tops the global happiness rankings for 2017 
 
 Norway has jumped from 4th place in 2016 to 1st place this year, followed by Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland in a tightly packed bunch. All of the top four countries rank highly on all the main factors found to support happiness: caring, freedom, generosity, honesty, health, income and good governance. Their averages are so close that small changes can re-order the rankings from year to year. Norway moves to the top of the ranking despite weaker oil prices. It is sometimes said that Norway achieves and maintains its high happiness not because of its oil wealth, but in spite of it. By choosing to produce its oil slowly, and investing the proceeds for the future rather than spending them in the present, Norway has insulated itself from the boom and bust cycle of many other resource-rich economies. To do this successfully requires high levels of mutual trust, shared purpose, generosity and good governance, all factors that help to keep Norway and other top countries where they are in the happiness rankings. 
 
 All of the other countries in the top ten also have high values in all six of the key variables used to explain happiness differences among countries and through time – income, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on in times of trouble, generosity, freedom and trust, with the latter measured by the absence of corruption in business and government. Here too there has been some shuffling of ranks among closely grouped countries, with this year’s rankings placing Finland in 5thplace, followed by the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia and Sweden tied for the 9th position, having the same 2014-2016 score to three decimals. 
 
 Happiness is both social and personal 
 
 This year’s report emphasizes the importance of the social foundations of happiness (see Chapter 2). This can be seen by comparing the life experiences between the top and bottom ten countries in this year’s happiness rankings. There is a four-point happiness gap between the two groups of countries, of which three-quarters is explained by the six variables, half due to differences in having someone to count on, generosity, a sense of freedom, and freedom from corruption. The other half of the explained difference is attributed to GDP per capita and healthy life expectancy, both of which, as the report explains, also depend importantly on the social context. 
 
 However 80% of the variance of happiness across the world occurs within countries. In richer countries the within-country differences are not mainly explained by income inequality, but by differences in mental health, physical health and personal relationships: the biggest single source of misery is mental illness (see Chapter 5). Income differences matter more in poorer countries, but even their mental illness is a major source of misery. 
 
 Work is also a major factor affecting happiness (see Chapter 6). Unemployment causes a major fall in happiness, and even for those in work the quality of work can cause major variations in happiness. 
 
 People in China are no happier than 25 years ago 
 
 Our China chapter is led by Richard A. Easterlin, who pioneered the economics of happiness more than 40 years ago. It contrasts the sharply growing per capita income in China over the past 25 years with life evaluations that fell steadily from 1990 till about 2005, recovering since then to about the 1990 levels. They attribute the dropping happiness in the first part of the period to rising unemployment and fraying social safety nets, with recoveries since in both (see Chapter 3). 
 
 Much of Africa is struggling 
 
 The Africa chapter, led by Valerie Møller, tells a much more diverse story, as fits the African reality with its great number and vast range of experiences. But these are often marked by delayed and disappointed hopes for happier lives (see Chapter 4). 
 
 Happiness has fallen in America 
 
 The USA is a story of reduced happiness. In 2007 the USA ranked 3rd among the OECD countries; in 2016 it came 19th. The reasons are declining social support and increased corruption (see Chapter 7) and it is these same factors that explain why the Nordic countries do so much better. 
 
 Colophon 
 
 World Happiness Report 2017 
 
 Editors: John Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey Sachs Associate Editors: Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Haifang Huang and Shun Wang 
 
 This publication may be reproduced using the following reference: Helliwell, J., Layard, R., & Sachs, J. (2017). World Happiness Report 2017, New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network. 
 
 World Happiness Report management by Sharon Paculor. Copy editing by Mariam Gulaid, Saloni Jain and Louise Doucette. Design by John Stislow and Stephanie Stislow. 
 
 ISBN 978-0-9968513-5-0
– The annual report from the Sustainable Development Solutions Network on the world's happiest and least happy countries is out, and if you live in the United States, sorry: The US doesn't make it into the Top 10 (it's ranked No. 13). The survey ranks 157 countries using factors including GDP, years of healthy life expectancy, freedom from business and government corruption, and "having someone to count on in times of trouble." The happiest: Denmark Switzerland Iceland Norway Finland The least happy (in order from most to least happy): Benin Afghanistan Togo Syria Burundi The SDSN notes that the editors of the list are encouraging a focus on "happiness inequality," saying that they have found such inequality has increased, and that people are happier in societies where there is more happiness equality. Click for the top and bottom 10 in each category from Reuters.