The happiness puzzle: If Finland is so happy, why isn’t anyone there feeling it?

What makes a country happy? Every year, the United Nations, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, and Gallup produce the World Happiness Report in an effort to find out. It measures answers from people in 143 countries who report on a 1 to 10 scale how they rate their life satisfaction. The report also looks at GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, personal freedom, generosity, and trust in institutions to help explain the variations.

However, it lacks one critical factor: emotions. 

This omission puzzles many, including Finns, whose country has ranked No. 1 for seven years. Finland, like most EU countries, provides free education and healthcare. Finns also report feeling high trust among their fellow citizens — a key quality in a country where parents put babies outside to nap. Additionally, the nation boasts an 82-year average lifespan, clean air, and 80,000 tranquil islands dotting a coastline cratered with 188,000 glacial lakes. 

But when I visited Helsinki in July, a few of the Finns I met wondered if their title of happiest country would still be accurate if the survey included factors that are admittedly harder to quantify, but perhaps more closely related to everyday feelings.

“Happiness itself is difficult to measure,” said Sami Joutsenvuo, head concierge at the Hotel Maria in Helsinki. Joutsenvuo told us Finland’s suicide rate has until recently been among the world’s highest, which he said seems counter to the narrative that Finland is the happiest place on Earth. He also speculated that the polar night, a period of prolonged darkness that lasts upward of eight weeks in northern regions, is one of the main mental-health challenges that zaps emotional well-being among Finns.

One way to better measure happiness may be simple: just ask 

The 2024 Gallup Global Emotions Report attempts to analyze international emotions with a greater range of nuance than the World Happiness Report. Rather than focusing on the economic and social conditions that may contribute to happiness, the Global Emotions Report asks 146,000 respondents from 142 countries directly about their positive and negative emotions. 

The survey looks at how often people laugh, smile, feel enjoyment, sleep well, learn something new, and are treated with respect. It also asks how often they feel pain, worry, sadness, stress, and anger. 

You’d expect the top 10 countries from each of these reports would have some overlap, but you’d be wrong. Not a single country appears in the top 10 of both the World Happiness Report and Gallup Global Emotions Report. 

Only one country — Costa Rica — comes close, ranking No. 12 in the WHR and No. 7 in Gallup’s survey. Kuwait is another standout, ranking in the top 20 of both reports. 

Finding “pura vida” in Costa Rica

Julia Lucas, a North Carolina nurse practitioner who spent two years in remote Costa Rica as a Peace Corps volunteer, says the country’s optimistic “pura vida” mindset is contagious. The country’s famous colloquial motto, meaning “pure life,” is a common greeting that reflects an overwhelmingly positive outlook among inhabitants.

“The ‘pura vida’ mindset is just the default there,” Lucas told me. “People generally look on the brighter side.”

While Lucas credits the culture for Costa Ricans’ emotional well-being, she also suggested that natural beauty fosters this sense of optimism.

“It’s hard to be sad when you’re in a beautiful place,” she said, recalling her life in a village 10 miles from the Nicaraguan border, where she was surrounded by national parks, wildlife refuges, and waterfalls. 

As a nurse practitioner, Lucas also pointed to the role of universal healthcare, which is available to citizens and permanent residents, in reducing stress. “Healthcare is a huge stressor in the US that they don’t have in Costa Rica,” she said.

The happiest places aren’t happy for everyone

Two additional reports — the Gay Travel Index and the Global Acceptance Index — look at whether a county’s utopian reputation extends to members of the LGBTQ+ community.  

The Gay Travel Index evaluates countries across 18 factors like HIV-related travel restrictions, marriage equality, legality of conversion therapy, and human rights violations (e.g. enforcing the death penalty for homosexuality). Similarly, the Global Acceptance Index is conducted every three to four years and measures acceptance levels for LGBTQ+ people by scoring respondents according to their positive, negative, or neutral attitudes about people who are queer.

As it turns out, many of the countries that top the World Happiness Report also score in the top 20 for LGBTQ+ acceptance and safety.

However, both Costa Rica and Kuwait fall from their pedestals here. Travel-industry leaders say Costa Rica has made great strides for equality, yet the country still comes in at No. 29 in the Gay Travel Index and No. 33 in the Global Acceptance Index. Kuwait lags much more dramatically in this category, barrelling downward to No. 201 of 210 in the Gay Travel Index and No. 107 of 175 in the Global Acceptance Index.

Thinking of moving abroad to be happier? Don’t look at the WHR survey

If you’re thinking of moving abroad for happiness, ironically, the World Happiness Report might not be your best guide. Expats have different needs than citizens, especially in places where a person’s social belonging factors greatly into their level of psychological security. 

Language barriers, for one, matter greatly for expat satisfaction. In an annual survey conducted by international networking platform InterNations, some 83% of Finnish expats described language difficulties as one of the worst barriers to happiness in their new home. Being unable to speak the local language excludes people from the social support networks Finland is so famously known for.

In the same survey, Panama ranked first for expat happiness. Respondents living in Panama reported a high quality of life, low language barriers, and access to affordable housing. Panama also scores high in Gallup’s Global Emotions survey, suggesting it might be a more emotionally fulfilling option for life abroad. 

The No. 2 and No. 3 spots for expat satisfaction — Mexico and Indonesia — ranked well thanks to what InterNations sums up as the ideal combination of friendly people and an affordable cost of living. As for healthcare, Mexico has both public and private options, and expats often opt for more personalized private care. And while 85% of expats in Indonesia reported feeling welcomed and respected in their new homes, over half (61%) said healthcare quality could be better. 

Finland is notoriously one of the worst places for expats — just two steps up from Kuwait, which comes in dead last. 

“Here is supposed to be the happiest country in the world, where everything is great, but actually it’s not,” said David Caceres del Castillo, a social-media manager who moved to Finland from El Salvador in 2006. At age 40, he has fully assimilated into Finnish society, earning a degree and citizenship during his 18 years there. He is now one of the 73,000 immigrants living in Finland.

When Caceres first arrived, education was free for foreigners. “Finland wanted to attract international students to have them integrate into the workforce,” he said. But today, non-Europeans must pay tuition, a change fueled by debates over immigration and public resources.

“There were always people questioning why so many foreigners were moving here,” Caceres said. “It was a public discussion — quieter than now, but still present.”

Other factors, like the war between Russia and Ukraine, have also impacted Finland’s attitude on expats. In 2022, Finland closed its borders to Russian tourists and, by 2024, enacted a temporary law to turn away asylum seekers, which drew criticism from the United Nations.

Despite the challenges, Finns are known for embracing the concept of “sisu,” or inner strength. It’s uncommon to hear someone griping about their problems in Finland, despite the fact that living there, Caceres said, “is not as easy as it looks.” In 2023, New York Times reporter Penelope Colston credited Finns’ “sisu” attitude for getting them through wars with both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany during the 20th century.

It could be this perseverance that helps the country maintain its No. 1 spot as the world’s “happiest” country, but to go back to where we started, perhaps asking if people are “satisfied,” as the WHR does, isn’t the same as asking people if they feel joy daily. Ultimately, what makes any individual happy is as complicated as all people are, but it’s worth examining if a place has the pieces of what may make that puzzle fall into place.

Megan DeMatteo is a journalist who’s written for Dwell, CNBC, Yahoo, Marie Claire, and Fodor’s Travel.

UPDATE (9/13/2024): Revised initial statement on the World Happiness Report’s methodology to clarify it only uses respondent’s rankings of life satisfaction to inform their rankings, not the other six factors as originally stated.