Finland named as happiest country again 

Finland has been ranked as the world's happiest country for the eighth successive year.

The country took top spot with an average score of 7.736 out of 10, with Denmark in second.

It came ahead of three other Nordic countries in this year's UN-sponsored World Happiness Report, while Latin America's Costa Rica and Mexico entered the top 10 for the first time.

Both the UK and the US slipped down the list to 23rd and 24th respectively - the lowest-ever position for the latter.

The study also found strangers are about twice as kind as people think. It measured trust in strangers by deliberately losing wallets, seeing how many were returned and comparing that with how many people thought would be handed in.

The 13th annual World Happiness Report, released to mark the UN's International Day of Happiness, ranks the world's happiest countries by asking people to evaluate their lives.

The study, published by the University of Oxford's Wellbeing Research Centre, asked people to rate their own lives on a scale of 0-10 - zero being the worst possible life and 10 being the best possible life.
Country rankings are based on a three-year average of those scores.

The top 10 are: 
1. Finland 2. Denmark 3. Iceland 4. Sweden 5. Netherlands 6. Costa Rica 7. Norway 8. Israel 
9. Luxembourg 10. Mexico