Happiness means different things to different cultures. The World Happiness Report can be very misleading.because in order to compare realistically it has to assume all people define happiness in the same way..but... that is definitely  not the case.

Social change, life expectancy, freedom to choose where you live and what you do all add to the outward well being of a person…however…achieving inner harmony seems to be the key to “happiness.” Although countries like Finland and Denmark may rank very high on the “happiness” scale, these two countries also have some of the highest suicide statistics.

Personally, I have periods of great happiness (especially when surrounded by nature and my family), but I do feel having a positive outlook in life is a great gift and more realistic and helps to deal with the negatives that must raise its head in any human’s life.

How can we be "steady" at 12 when we fell from 11th place?

Isn't that a fall instead of a steady?

I note that the happiest countries in this survey are also countries which have a high social welfare culture.

And countries at the bottom have no culture of social welfare.

Interestingly the happiest countries also have some of the best education systems in the world. So you wouldn't be very happy if like too many Australian students you left school unable to properly read and write. Then your only ambition would be something like non productive sport rather than pursuing something more productive and thus more satisfying.

A thousand different people can have a thousand different definitions of happy. What makes one person happy can easily make another person not happy. Life is all about diversity.  Many people would prefer us all to be the same, and that's never going to happen.