Content warning: this article discusses suicide.
Last week the United Nations released its annual World Happiness Report. Predictably, Finland was in the top spot, where it’s been since 2018. Other northern European countries rounded out the list, alongside Israel and New Zealand. Australia came in 12th — having peaked at No. 9 in 2017, we’ve hovered just outside the top 10 since.
Some have questioned these rankings, however. Former World Bank economist Branko Milanović wondered aloud how Finland’s supposed joy squares with also having one of the world’s highest anti-depressant usage rates, and others have cited the country’s higher-than-average rates of suicide. There have also been many efforts to undermine the report’s credibility since it launched in 2013.
Cynicism towards country rankings is understandable; many such listicles, such as the “most liveable cities” rankings, are based on questionable methods. But while the World Happiness Report has its limitations, it cannot be so easily dismissed.
The Nordic countries’ superior life satisfaction is real and related to their distinct economic model. And Australia’s inability to close the quality-of-life gap despite being ranked the wealthiest nation on earth last year speaks to real policy failures that we must reckon with.
An evidence-based vibe check?
The report’s name is a bit of a misnomer. It asks respondents “to evaluate their current life as a whole using the image of a ladder, with the best possible life for them as a 10 and worst possible as a 0” — more life satisfaction than happiness.
People receiving treatment for depression can certainly be satisfied with their lives. Indeed, some have argued that Scandinavian countries’ high rates of antidepressant use could be the result of better healthcare access, showing robust health systems meeting public needs.
Underlying rates of depression were “relatively moderate or low” in Nordic countries in the mid-2010s. They’ve increased since, particularly during COVID, but that’s happened everywhere.
Nordic countries can also be bitterly cold with reduced sunlight, which increases the risk of seasonal affective disorder. But while very cold weather can increase rates of mental health issues, so can very hot weather, and the reports find weather has little correlation with overall life satisfaction scores. Neither does population size or immigration rates, another common conservative explanation for Nordic success.
As for suicide, historically high Scandinavian rates have decreased significantly thanks to concerted government campaigns, but Finland remains above average. The report’s editor, Professor John F Helliwell, explains this by pointing to low levels of religion, which are “very important in stopping suicides, but not so important in producing happiness with life”.
They also have high divorce rates, which is “bad for both, but it’s worse for suicides than it is for life evaluations”. Some of the secular freedoms enabling the Nordics to score highly on “freedom to make life choices” also present acute mental health challenges for some individuals.
The pursuit of public spending
If the mental health rebuttal doesn’t hold, what’s the Finnish secret sauce? It’s not, as many media outlets have insisted for years, its “hygge” culture of cosiness and warmth.
The report finds six key variables that explain more than three-quarters of the variation in national happiness scores: GDP per capita; social support; healthy life expectancy; freedom to make life choices; generosity; freedom from corruption.
Another important indicator is “happiness equality”. It’s more likely that countries whose individuals have similar responses to one another will score higher on happiness overall (excluding countries whose citizens score themselves as similarly miserable, like Afghanistan). Nordic countries do well on this measure, mirroring their relative equality of economic outcomes.
Nordic countries score particularly highly on social support and freedom. This year’s report focuses on the significant difference made by “state effectiveness”, which comprises the ability to raise money and deliver services, the rule of law, and the avoidance of civil war and repression.
It’s in the former category where Nordic and Australian divergence is best explained. Nordic countries are famous for “cradle-to-grave” welfare states, including generous child payments, unemployment insurance, pensions and universal services such as healthcare and education. These shield citizens from risks such as job loss and illness, leaving them freer to make choices such as changing careers and having larger families.
Australia’s welfare state is comparatively paltry and patchy, leaving citizens more at the mercy of external forces. Want to have another kid? Our child benefits are mediocre and childcare is expensive. Want to make a risky career move like retraining or starting a business? Fail and you’ll fall back on below-poverty level payments. Getting too old for work? You’d better not have taken significant time out of the workforce throughout your career, or else your super balance won’t get you by, and the pension is less than generous.
The demands on public coffers for such support are only rising, but Australia isn’t raising nearly enough revenue to deliver. And that’s before the stage three tax cuts kick in.
The Nordics aren’t utopias — indeed, Finland may soon boot out its young, female-led, left-leaning government. But for a nation that vaunts our lifestyle and prides itself on podium finishes, Australia’s Finnish drubbing should leave us unhappy indeed.
For anyone seeking help, Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and Beyond Blue is 1300 22 4636. In an emergency, call 000.
Interesting. I’m struggling to see why it is assumed there must be a fundamental contradiction between a nation’s population being generally happy and a relatively high suicide rate. As the article says, one of Finland’s positive characteristics is ‘freedom to make life choices’. There cannot be any more important life choice than when to say that’s enough, time to go. I’d be a fair bit happier if I knew my life could not be extended beyond what I want by various official and medical interventions made against my will.
Good point. Voluntary assisted dying seems to me a very different issue from suicide from despair.
Exactly. Until you have some data on why people are choosing suicide, and even what’s defined as ‘suicide’, then the conclusions are irrelevant.
Not really – suicide is killing yourself , voluntary assisted dying is killing yourself with the help other strangers who have immunity against homicide. Either way you die by your own volition.
There is a vast gulf of difference between killing yourself because you’re six months away from a painful death from a terminal disease, and killing yourself because of depression or financial hardship.
I remember 20 years ago a Finnish guide on a tour through Helsinki remarked that the long winters were particularly tough on young men who took to booze and suicide. So climate contrast could well be a factor, that should not affect us here in Oz. It will in th years to come as we heat up and have more ‘natural’ disasters.
There is the wet season and the Mango madness which affects the young men in the north of Australia similarly.
There are a lot of questionable single car accidents at that time of year in the north.
Going ‘troppo’ in the NT was common in the wet season. A bloke might come home from outside work and not find his key, so he’d find an axe and chop the door down. Modern air conditioning has helped considerably.
I struggle to reconcile the fact that Israel is listed fourth with what I keep seeing on the tv news where protestors are out everywhere across the nation.
I concur, wholeheartedly.
If Israel is so wonderful, why do most of the world’s Jews live elsewhere?
Might as well ask why the number of those with Irish ancestry outside the Republic of Ireland is so much bigger than the population of the RoI. On their own the numbers are meaningless for indicating how happy the country is.
The protest are very recent – the data was probably gathered before they started.
Palestinians might argue it’s been awful there since at least ’48
“Was” might be relevant.
Israel at #4? WTF! Half the population is revolting in the streets!
…and the other half is simply revolting.
Finland runs on the same ethos that held during the 60’s and 70’s in Australia, which was that our population was too small to waste the gifts of intelligence by running a stratified society which set everyone in place in the aspic of “What school did you go to?”
This was the era whereby the federal government provided Commonwealth scholarships to year 12 for the top 3% of each of the states and territories and another to University. We graduated with our degrees, a pathway to career progression and no HELP/ HECS debt.
The brightest in their fields were offered public service jobs or CSIRO or CSL (owned by the Commonwealth).
Compare this with current situation and tell me that we have not sold down the S–t Chute the current generations who may have come from families without the means to pay their children’s HELP debts up front. This, coupled with the tacit understanding that it is not what you know, but, who you know, that is important.
Well put, with appropriate examples.
And for those not inclined to books there were apprenticeships far & wide, often highly contested despite the minimal pay rates for the training period.
Once you had a ‘ticket’ the world was your oyster.
Yep, and bulk billing, free Uni, a single wage could support a family and buy a house etc. The good ol’ days before privatisation and corporate greed usurped our democratic socialist paradise – values led capitalism back then! One of the TV reports (forget which) said that Finland had a smaller gap between the top and lowest 20% of earners than other countries. Meanwhile we have burgeoning and gross economic inequality which represents threat to democracies on top of its attendant suffering, health costs, crime etc as the disenfranchised are vulnerable to far right propaganda. The Greens are very right that this is a crisis. No matter how Labor tries to spin it a gov that doesn’t work for all the people isn’t working. I fear for our social cohesion and confidence in democracy if they go ahead with stage 3 tax cuts as they are taking from the poor – withdrawing stay at home payments, no free Rats and tests which rules them out for pensioners, leaving jobseekers far below poverty line and the rest on it, cutting telehealth and psych consults, stopping long covid clinics ffs (need to fact check that was told it but didn’t confirm) – all seriously bad moves that Communicate this gov isn’t working for me for all those affected and to then give extra to the top end on top of this god help us.
I wonder at the claimed health benefits of relgion. My own experience of religious people is that they are only happy when the are dumping guilt trips on everyone else or demonising non binary people. I suggest a rethink of its efficacy.
The article does not say religion has health benefits. It says religious belief reduces suicide rates, so maybe that implies better mental health but the article does not say so. Published scientific research supports the article’s statement, although there are variations and it is a complicated subject. For example, Michigan State University, 2017, summary: “Religious participation is linked to lower suicide rates in many parts of the world, including the United States and Russia, but does not protect against the risk of suicide in sections of Europe and Asia, according to new research.”
That’s reassuring – there was I thinking that self detonating suicide bombers were religious nutters…
The relatively tiny number of such is hardly going to make a blip in the overall numbers. They could well be overtaken by USA school shooters, who usually kill themselves too and are not typically identified as notasbly religious. But on the other hand, if there were enough of them and they were particularly effective it might still drive down suicide rates among the religious, because they usually blow up places of worship and could therefore murder such numbers of believers there would be few left to kill themselves, which would preserve the low rate of religious suicides.
These people are a noisy minority.
The vast majority of religious believers across the world are moderates (to put it mildly) and go through life with a comforting internalised idea of god & heaven they talk little about with random others, let alone proselytise.
Michael, You must know another bunch of Christians. Most that I know are happy and are happy to help others. But not are Happy Clappies or fundamentalists
The crutch of the big fella in the sky is reassuring for the religious. Their curiosity does not extend to attempting to comprehend the unimaginable vastness of the bit of the universe we see, with 2 trillion galaxies billions of light years from us! Hang on- I better go and take my tablets.