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What makes the Finns so happy?

Britain has tumbled down the wellbeing rankings - and now it is time to learn from the country at the top

Trust in UK politics has cratered. Image: TNW

We may have been happy once, but heaven knows we Brits are miserable now. 

Over the past five years, the UK has steadily slid down the World Happiness Index. In 2020, we ranked 13th globally; by 2022, we had slipped to 17th, and by 2023, to 19th. And in the latest 2025 report, published just last month, the UK fell to 23rd place, its lowest position since the rankings began in their current form in 2017.

This decline is especially pronounced among younger people. Brits under 30 now rank 32nd in the world for happiness, trailing those from countries like Moldova and Nicaragua. 

Other wellbeing metrics echo this downward trend. A recent Sapien Labs report, which measures mental wellbeing based on emotional resilience, social connectedness, and a sense of meaning in life, ranked the UK as the second most miserable country on Earth. We were behind only Uzbekistan.

Wellbeing was once a buzzword in Westminster. Back in 2010, former prime minister David Cameron publicly committed to the measurement and promotion of quality of life as well as economic growth, admitting GDP was an “incomplete way” of measuring a country’s progress. In his 2020 party leadership bid, Keir Starmer also declared his future government’s intention to “treat wellbeing equally to economic growth”, later telling the 2021 Labour conference that “with every pound spent on your behalf, we would expect the Treasury to weigh not just its effect on national income, but also its effects on wellbeing”.

But the realities of governing arrive quickly. Today, the wellbeing agenda has been eclipsed by a narrower focus on economic growth and national security: GDP numbers and border controls. 

While these matter, and undoubtedly shape a nation’s mood, global politics show the danger of ignoring people’s everyday quality of life. In the US, the 2024 election was a wake-up call for leaders who ignored public discontent. Brexit offered Britain a similar lesson: voters whose emotional and social needs go unmet will always find a way to be heard.

So what would happen if the government took happiness seriously? Across the North Sea, Finland – a nation of -20°C winters, modest dreams of summer cottages and potato patches – continues to top the Index, year after year. 

At first glance, it seems an unlikely frontrunner: a remote, northern country with long, dark winters and an 830-mile border with Russia. It has faced its own struggles, including historically high levels of alcohol and drug dependency. And yet, when people around the world are asked to rate their lives on a scale from 0 to 10, Finland consistently comes out on top. 

For Finnish political philosopher Frank Martela, his country’s top ranking comes down to strong democratic institutions and a robust welfare state. “Unemployment benefits, maternity and paternity leave, universal health care… these factors all contribute to high levels of life satisfaction,” he says.

Martela notes that high levels of life satisfaction can also be linked to the high levels of trust in Finnish institutions and each other. “And of course, they are combined … When the institutions function well, people tend to trust them more, and when they trust them more, then they tend to vote for candidates who are more prone to retain the institutions.”

Finland has one of the lowest levels of corruption globally, a robust democracy, and remarkably high public trust. Education is free from cradle to university. The welfare state is strong. Crime is low. The water is clean and the air is unpolluted. 

There’s a hard political truth here: countless studies have found that societies with stronger governments and welfare systems report higher life satisfaction levels, with one cross-national analysis from 157 countries finding “strong empirical linkages between government quality and national happiness”.

Here in the UK, increasing life dissatisfaction and anxiety is widely viewed as a key driver of voter volatility. Much of this has been attributed to rising economic insecurity and combined pressures of high inflation, stagnating wages, and a shrinking sense of financial control. 

Research by the anti-poverty charity, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, has linked this growing malaise to Labour’s post-election losses since July 2024. Geoffrey Evans, Professor of the Sociology of Politics at the University of Oxford, noted that “high-anxiety mid-lifers” are bearing the brunt, suggesting that “there is an opportunity available to any party that can soothe the financial fears of people in mid-life as they are more politically available than the young and the old.”

However, personal finances don’t tell the full story. As Martela points out, Finland’s high levels of wellbeing are closely tied to strong state institutions and a comprehensive welfare system. In contrast, Britain’s slide down the global happiness rankings has coincided with the decline of its public services.

Over the past 15 years, satisfaction with core services, including healthcare, education, social care, and housing, has plummeted as austerity measures have slashed public spending. Satisfaction with the NHS, once a pillar of national pride, has fallen from 77 per cent in 2010 to just 21 per cent in 2024, according to the British Social Attitudes Survey.

Meanwhile, trust in UK politics has cratered. Just 9 per cent of Britons now believe politicians act in the public interest. Research from the World Happiness Report shows a clear link: where public services are accessible, reliable and fair, people report higher life satisfaction. Conversely, as these services erode and trust in political institutions fades, happiness tends to decline. 

Will Davies, professor of political economy at Goldsmiths and author of Nervous States: How feeling took over the world, sees a clear link between the UK’s increasing malaise and the continuing impact of austerity. He argues that austerity has had both a tangible and psychological effect. 

First, the dismantling of public services, cuts to local government funding, and the closure of public spaces have directly diminished people’s sense of wellbeing and community. But beyond the material impact, austerity has also exacted a cultural and psychological toll. 

Davies says that initially, many saw austerity as a necessary moral correction, something to be justified as “reaping what we sowed.” However, as real wages stagnated and inflation surged, that moral justification unraveled. 

Today, people are left grappling with a pervasive sense of insecurity that feeds their discontent. “There’s a kind of moral psychology at play,” Davies observes, noting the link between economic insecurity and the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment in the UK.

He says: “The fact that ‘I can’t afford anything anymore’ is linked to issues like small boat arrivals… to a commentator from the Financial Times or Guardian, that may seem nonsensical, but it makes perfect sense to someone whose life is increasingly unviable. ‘This country isn’t enough to go around anymore. I’ve just been to Gregg’s, and my sausage roll costs £3.50  – it used to be cheaper – and meanwhile, we’ve got a bunch of able-bodied young men turning up here to live in a hotel for free, paid for by me.’ This is the chain of equivalence that resonates with a lot of people.”

This national inertia has created an opening for the rise of the far right. Periods of political upheaval and economic uncertainty, often driving support for populist parties like Reform UK, tend to coincide with declines in life satisfaction. While direct evidence remains limited, available data suggests that Reform UK supporters are often highly dissatisfied with both the economic and political landscape — factors linked to lower well-being.

Richard Layard, a former Labour adviser, peer, and a leading author of the World Happiness Report, has long advocated for embedding wellbeing in policy. He argues that if the government were to prioritise improving people’s life satisfaction, it would stand the best chance of countering the growing appeal of the populist right. “People who vote for these extremist parties, especially the extreme right, are those who are very dissatisfied with their own lives and have little trust in others,” he explains.

But Labour’s current strategy of appeasing the demands of the right, focusing on “efficiencies” in government, rolling back welfare, and reducing immigration risks not only normalises the rhetoric of the very people they’re trying to fight off,  it also risks exacerbating unhappiness as this narrative of managed decline  – or limiting expectations – closely mirrors the austerity mindset that drives so many to despair. 

Layard points out that there is some good wellbeing-focused policy at the heart of the Labour government, highlighting billions of pounds of investment into the NHS and the reduction of waiting lists. But he stresses the need for this to go further, in the form of more enhanced mental health support, explaining that short-sighted treasury policy-making has left politicians reluctant to commit to upfront investment. 

Layard says: “Mental health has always been the Cinderella service of the NHS, but many interventions to support mental health actually cost little for the government. They help people return to work, generate more tax revenue, and reduce reliance on physical healthcare services.” 

He also urges a shift in political language, which he feels could reinvigorate voters: “It would be much more exciting to the public if the government said outright that its goal is to maximise well-being, with growth as a means to that end. That’s how growth should be thought of and spoken about.” 

As Martela points out, a government’s ultimate purpose is not to guide people to happiness, but give people less things to worry about – strengthening their safety net and easing their peace of mind. If Labour wants to stem the tide of populism and build a more stable, cohesive Britain, it may need to shift its focus from short-term economic growth to long-term public wellbeing. It will probably have to invest much more than Rachel Reeves has currently earmarked for the social safety nets and services that have made nations like Finland not just happy, but resilient.

“It’s not that there are more extremely happy people in Finland, but it’s more that there are very few extremely unhappy people in Finland,” Martela explains. “The Finnish system has been able to remove many sources of misery from people’s lives.”

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