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For the sixth year in a row, Finland is the world's happiest country, according to World Happiness Report rankings
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- The world's happiest countries for 2023 | CNN
- Authors
- Marnie Hunter
- Published
- Mar 20 2023
It's always as morbid, but I expect that the results are skewed in favor of the Nordic countries because higher suicide rates than many other countries reduce the number of people who're unhappy rather effectively.
The difference between countries at the top of the rankings is so low that these demographic factors probably change ranking orders quite a bit.
I'm going to say their suicide rate is statistically insignificant. Finland has a population of 5.5M and a suicide rate, per your link, of 13.4 per 100k, that's 742 suicides per year. Not nearly enough to sway the results for the other 99.99% of the country.
It leaves suicide as the largest or second largest cause of death for a number of young age groups.
Those people are then not part of the population for many decades later impacting happiness stats cumulatively.
The whole index is based on an "average live evaluation" on a 1-10 scale. The difference in scores between the top countries is small. With averages above 7.0, one person scoring a 1 or 0 in the nationally-representative sample lowers the average in ways that would take several people to balance out.
The national health focus on suicides also means that those with suicide attempts get significant support, which will again influence ratings considerably reducing scores from very low numbers in a number of people. Many times the number of people who manage to take their lives get help after attempts on their lives.
It's hard to estimate the compounding factor there.
It's also easy to overestimate the factors.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death in Finland until age 35 and while that is significant, the number of people dying up to that age is miniscule. In a country of 5.5M, 30 young people a year taking their own life isn't swinging the scales of the total country's happiness.
Why are the suicide rates so high there?
There are a number of different theories. Suicides increase across the globe when you have a dark season of little or no sunlight during winter. That could be one factor.
Another possible factor is that you have a homogenous society where there are large costs associated with being outside relatively strict behavioral norms. Once you're out, you could be out.
Some also point to cultures where men can be expected to drink considerably while alone.
As with most things in society, there are probably many different contributing factors and circumstances. To some extent it's probably also a cultural thing that self-reinforces.
I'm sure a Finn could shed more light. These trends are similar in other Nordic countries too, with variations of different factors from country to country.
Great comment, and I think you're spot on. The homogenous society has for sure been a huge cause of mental distress in my life. However, with how online everyone is these days, it's been pleasant to see the shift in culture in the past decade or two.
Don't they spend a good portion of the year without much sunlight?
Finn here. It's the post Winter War traumas being passed from generation to generation, long dark winters and the usual causes that are affecting our youth these days globally.
Right now we're dealing with a pretty catastrophic collapse of our public health services. Mostly due to Sipilä's government in the past decade driving through this reform that brought in more bureocracy and made everything less effective. They fucked education up, too.
There is an election coming up and I'm kinda afraid we're going to suck up to the capitalist interests and end up where the US is in terms of their health system. And we might not stop there. Education has been kneecapped and is next on the privatization craze list. The inflation is rocking us hard and we're still seeing the mental health fallout from COVID lockdowns and Putin's war. Straight up fascist rants are being broadcasted uninterrupted in our political debates on the state funded news network.
I've never seen anyone in Finland see one of these headlines and not respond with "yeah well that's some bullshit". My other comment(s) in this thread shed some light on why I think we aren't quite as happy as some of the reporting might lead you to believe.
If you're a worker bee type who likes to not think too hard about anything and just consume large amounts of alcohol while watching subpar game shows on their free time, you might be happy. That is until your health starts to detoriate and you get to deal with what's left of our health and welfare services and you realize what a shit hand you've been dealt.
At least it's getting brighter outside, perkele.
I’ve always found the happiness metric to be indeed culturally biased, measuring what educated Westerners consider to be components of “the good life” — and shocker, educated Western places turn out happiest on that measure.
It measures everything except happiness, which itself is multi-faceted.
Big shades of the parable of the businessman and the fisherman in the metric https://thestorytellers.com/the-businessman-and-the-fisherman/
A good friend of mine just told this story to me this Saturday at a party. Small world.
I don't think happiness itself can be measured.
I think there are components that be measured.
A question like "are you happy?" is too difficult to answer because happiness has many components.
But questions like "are you optimistic about your future?" and "do you think you're doing better or worse than most people?" get much more concrete answers and give clues about the amorphous thing called happiness.
It's quite possible that research is really about those things you list, something that might be more aptly called "satisfaction". Happiness is such a subjective concept.