The World Happiness Report 2024, recently published by Gallup, ranked Finland first in terms of personal life satisfaction. At the same time, this document revealed that young people in the United States and Western Europe are increasingly less satisfied with their lives, informs the New York Post.
Unfortunately, the same trend of dissatisfaction characterizes Romania, which in this report ranks 32nd, down 8 places compared to the previous report, when it ranked 24th.
The study, which covered a period of three years, surveyed more than 100,000 people from 143 countries, who were asked to rate their lives on a scale of 1 to 10.
Since the mid-2000s, Gallup found that happiness levels have fallen sharply among 15- to 24-year-olds in the U.S., while young people in Western Europe have seen a more gradual decline.
Young people blame an epidemic of loneliness
Of the 143 countries surveyed, the US ranked 23rd globally, an all-time low for the US, which dropped eight places. Also worrying is the fact that those who declared themselves most dissatisfied were young people, which placed the US in 62nd place in terms of people between the ages of 15 and 24.
This year is the first year since the report was launched 20 years ago that the US has not been included in the top 20 happiest countries.
The data support the idea of a “epidemics of loneliness” among young people and although loneliness is not “excessively high” globally, it was nearly twice as high among millennials compared to those born before 1965.
Although there is no single reason behind the decline in happiness among young people, it shows the importance “having someone to lean on in times of need…as one of the most important predictors of life satisfaction”, said Lara Aknin, a social psychologist and one of the editors of the report.
The Nordic countries remain at the top
The trend of Nordic countries taking the top spots continued this year, with Finland claiming the title of the world's happiest country for the seventh time in a row, followed by Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Australia .
Miika Mäkitalo, CEO of Finland-based customer experience company HappyOrNot, told The Post: “There is definitely a sense of surprise that we are the happiest country. A large part of this is because we are usually known for not expressing much emotion easily. In fact, we have a joke in Finland about the 'Finnish smile', which is just a neutral expression.”
Despite the surprise, Miika Mäkitalo declared that the Finns are “Incredibly grateful” that they were voted the happiest country and that some of the best parts of living and working in Finland include the beautiful nature and “the generous 4-5 weeks of annual leave”.
“Although it can be extremely cold and dark here for much of the year, the Finnish concept of 'sisu' (meaning 'endurance' or 'courage') and our love of the sauna are just some of the ways we keep our spirits up . Ultimately, though, I think confidence is the biggest factor in Finnish happiness. There is a lot of trust in our society, between fellow citizens, and this also applies in the workplace, between managers and employees. In my opinion, trust is essential to successful organizations with happy employees!”, said Miika Mäkitalo.
