What makes us happy and why Finland and Costa Rica do better

BarcelonaTaking a trip to a paradise island. Buying a house. Curing an illness. Having time for family and friends. Winning the lottery. Getting promoted at work. Playing a football match on Sundays. Having children. Sitting on a terrace in the sun. These are all real answers to a question as intimate as it is complex, which thinkers and philosophers, political and religious leaders, sociologists and psychologists –and perhaps those reading these lines– have tried to address throughout their lives: What makes us happy?

For the philosopher Victòria Camps, happiness is “a lifelong pursuit”; it is not a place one arrives at, but a way of managing existence itself. The aristocrat François de La Rochefoucauld already predicted in the 17th century that humans “will never be as happy or as unhappy as we imagine” and invited us to learn to manage expectations and find balance; Socrates assured that happiness is found in “the ability to be content with what we already have, even if it is little”, and the essayist of South Korean origin and Princess of Asturias Award winner in 2025, Byung-Chul Han, defines humans as “narcissistic performance subjects” who exhaust themselves and whitewash self-exploitation and, therefore, sabotage their own happiness.

There is no universal formula for happiness. At first glance, it seems that each person understands it according to their life experience, age, personality, social context, learned values, tastes... There would be as many conceptions and aspirations of happiness as there are people in the world. Etymologically, there are also diverse interpretations. From the Latin felicitas, -atis, initially the word felicitat referred to qualities such as “fruitful” or “productive”. It later became an adjective to describe someone who is –lucky” or to celebrate something that happens “propitiously”. And in the Dictionary of the Institute for Catalan Studies (DIEC), it is defined as a “consideration of full satisfaction in life”.

In a world thirsty for data and indicators, there are also major statistics on happiness and subjective well-being such as the World Happiness Report, produced since 2006 by the Oxford University's Wellbeing Research Centre, the company Gallup, and with the support of the United Nations (UN). The objective is to understand what makes people happy. This report contains three elements that nourish something similar to the updated definition of happiness: earning enough money to live comfortably, sharing daily life with family and friends, and having years of life (and health).

The World Happiness Report is a thermometer that aims to measure the degree of satisfaction with which the population lives in 147 countries through a sample of 100,000 respondents, and it is based on the premise that being happy is conditioned by the social and economic circumstances of the place where one lives. In total, the report takes into account seven factors: average wealth, social support received in times of need, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life decisions, generosity –received and given–, trust in governments, and, specifically, the self-perception of happiness and personal satisfaction, which is scored from 0 to 10. “These factors help explain the differences between nations,” clarify the report's promoters. But, is it possible to measure happiness? Can we know where the happiest people live? And why are they so or what limits them from being so?

A more or less satisfied society

In the latest edition of the World Happiness Report, published on March 20, Nordic countries once again lead the ranking. For nine years now, Finland has topped the list, with a score of 7.76 out of 10 attributed mainly to a high GDP per capita, efficient health, education, and social protection systems, and consolidated work-life balance and wealth redistribution policies. Iceland (7.5), with particularly strong community ties, and Denmark (7.5), where citizens highlight good working conditions and leisure time enjoyment, complete the podium. “They have higher taxes and a higher standard of living, but there is a key invisible variable: high institutional trust,” says José Carlos Ramos, professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). In Sweden, in fifth place (7.3 points), the population also highly values the low perception of corruption.

Many differences between countries are explained by political leadership and the design and execution of the welfare state. There is more trust where governments guarantee solid social protection, a low unemployment rate, and mechanisms that ensure income in case of economic hardship. “People are the same, we have almost identical needs, but institutions do not behave in the same way. GDP buys everything that generates well-being, but it does not create happiness. It depends a lot on how administrations use it,” argues Ada Ferrer i Carbonell, an economist specializing in subjective well-being, a scientist at the Institute of Economic Analysis (IAE-CSIC), and a professor at the Barcelona School of Economics (BSE).

This year, in fourth place in the rankings, Costa Rica has landed (with 7.4 points), the only representative from Latin America among the ten countries with the highest self-perception of happiness, although Mexico is also in twelfth place. In the case of Costa Ricans –who have been improving positions for three years, moving from 21st in 2023 to fourth– this improvement responds to high satisfaction linked to the importance of family and community: they have larger households, where several generations live together, not out of obligation but by choice, and an extensive social life, deeply rooted in the community. And broadly speaking, the World Happiness Report highlights that having trusted people, sharing time with them, and participating in society influences well-being more than economic factors, even though these do indeed become the main reason for dissatisfaction. They are two sides of the same coin.

Publications that measure happiness levels, such as the World Happiness Report, actually explore life satisfaction, understanding it as the degree of coherence between what one has had, has, and expects to have in the future. These results are then combined with indicators of social and emotional well-being. The three concepts (happiness, well-being, and satisfaction) are often used as synonyms, but life satisfaction is what provides more information for the science of well-being, points out Ferrer i Carbonell. "It correlates more with health, meaning, and purpose in life, and is not as tied to fleeting emotions," she explains.

Within the same territory, there can be great inequalities in the self-perception of happiness. In a country, people who say they are very satisfied, people who are not satisfied at all, and people who fluctuate between happiness and unhappiness coexist. In fact, anyone can experience moments of happiness and, at the same time, feel unsatisfied. And vice versa. You yourself may feel happy or unhappy right now, but this, by itself, does not allow us to assess your life satisfaction. "In these studies, the key question is not whether we are happy, but whether we are satisfied," says psychologist Sylvie Pérez, who reminds us that happiness is an oscillating state of well-being.

However, the structural nature of the index means that immediate emotional responses to crises, wars, or catastrophes take a backseat. This explains why Israel, despite dropping from sixth to eighth position in 2025 due to the war, has revalidated its score (7.1) this year and remains among the countries most highly rated by its population. At the bottom of the ranking, we find Afghanistan, where the population scores its happiness at 1.4 and considers it the "unhappiest nation" after decades of devastation and conflict. Venezuela and Lebanon are also at the bottom.

Spain has been declining in this index for a long time: this year it has dropped to position 41 (previously 38), but it maintains a rather favorable position due to a high life expectancy and a strong community and family culture, the report states. However, low wages and job insecurity penalize it. Ramos adds that, although the economy is doing well, the improvement is not reaching families: “There is an increasing concentration of wealth in fewer hands”. To this must be added an increase in distrust towards institutions and the severe housing crisis that is being experienced.

Experts emphasize that both in Catalonia and Spain there are elements that favor a welfare ecosystem, such as the climate, the hours of daylight, the closer way of relating and strong social ties. But there are also structural weaknesses: more than half of the population earns less than 23,000 euros gross per year and allocates between 35% and 50% to housing. A constant pressure that erodes tranquility and limits life projects and the basic material conditions of a significant portion of citizens.

There is a generational gap

The report also points out that there are significant differences in the self-perception of happiness according to the age of the respondents. For the first time, the World Happiness Report offers separate rankings by generations and focuses on the population under 30 years of age. According to data from the global Gallup poll, life evaluations among young people in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have decreased dramatically – by almost one point on a scale of 0 to 10 – over the last decade, while the average for young people in the rest of the world has increased.

Regarding the United Kingdom and the United States, which drop to 29th and 23rd positions, respectively, the report notes the worst results in the historical series for both countries, mainly due to a loss of trust, both towards politicians and among peers. In the North American case, it is mainly due to polarization, increasing inequality, and the rising dissatisfaction expressed by young people. Last year, the study already warned of an increase in loneliness in this age group. The influence of social networks – especially those based on algorithms – has been the focus of much of the World Happiness Report's edition, and experts warn that their intensive use is contributing to the decline in well-being among young people in English-speaking countries and Western Europe, especially among girls. However, those who are deliberately off social networks are also losing some positive effects, especially from those designed for communication.

In the rest of the world, most young people are happier today than 20 years ago, the report's authors emphasize. For example, several states in Central and Eastern Europe are climbing positions, mostly due to improved perceptions among those under 25; a trend clearly seen with Kosovo (16th position) and Serbia (30th). Lithuania tops the list as the happiest country for those under 30, while Denmark is the happiest nation in the world for people aged 60 and over. Also according to the analysis, boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) are on average happier than millennials (1981-1996), and the gap widens even more with the passage of years. The study also points out that the global adult population now expresses more negative emotions such as worry, sadness, and anger, but these indicators are increasing more among young people.

Sylvie Pérez reflects on the concept of feeling unhappy due to unmet expectations. Previous generations – marked by wars, migrations, or poverty – transmitted the idea of guaranteed progress to their descendants, which has often not materialized due to new crises, and this has led, she says, to happiness being sought as if it were a permanent state or an obligation. “This makes it very difficult to discover if you are happy or if happiness is passing you by, and not knowing or being able to identify it is often experienced as a failure,” explains the psychologist.

Beyond a country's wealth

Beyond its position in global rankings, some governments have long been creating their own well-being indices to obtain direct information from their citizens. The paradigmatic case is Bhutan, which since the seventies has used the gross national happiness index to measure the impact of its policies. After the Second World War, GDP was considered the key indicator for measuring social and economic progress and, therefore, the engine of happiness in the world. It wasn't until the seventies that economist Richard Easterlin theorized that earning more money increases happiness immediately, but not sustainably. That is, that after achieving a certain income, earning more does not lead to a significant increase in well-being, and in countries with sustained high growth, life satisfaction does not necessarily increase.

In Europe, the initiative to measure the population's happiness gained momentum from 2008, when the French government of Nicolas Sarkozy asked Nobel laureates in economics Joseph Stiglitz – famous for arguing that the state must correct market failures – and Amartya Sen – whose work was key to creating the UN's Human Development Index (HDI) – for recommendations on measuring the country's progress. A few years later, in 2011, the United Kingdom began to do so through its Office for National Statistics (ONS). Ramos states that "there is no turning back" in this trend and that more and more countries will join it.

Well-being science argues that GDP also does not indicate whether the population is healthier, has free time, suffers from stress or anxiety, feels safe or socially connected, or finds meaning in their lives. "Mostly, people don't want to be very rich, but to have economic security. They don't want a big apartment, but to be able to keep it," exemplifies Ferrer i Carbonell.

Although the European Union does not oblige states to assess the happiness of Europeans, the statistical office (Eurostat) urges them to collect data on citizens' satisfaction and quality of life. In Spain –which does not have a specific index–, the National Statistics Institute (INE) directly asks about the degree of life satisfaction on a scale of 0 to 10, but in a very generic way. In Catalonia, in 2024 the Generalitat created the Observatory of Subjective Well-being. The index states that Catalans rate their happiness at 6.9, and the most relevant factors for achieving this state are health and family (38% each), economic situation (34%), and work life (33%).

Two years ago, 15% of the Catalan population said they felt "very satisfied" with their lives, and 52% "quite satisfied". 24% rated their lives a 6 or 7 out of 10 and stated they felt "moderately" satisfied, while 6% said they felt unhappy (giving it a score of 3 or 4 out of 10). Only 3% claimed to feel not happy at all (0 to 2). According to the study – in which Ferrer i Carbonell participated – the least satisfied people place more importance on income, while the most satisfied highlight health and social ties as drivers. By age, the elderly particularly value health, while young people focus on work: depending on whether they work in places where they feel valued and if it allows them free time. Although the idea was to update the index, the Government has not yet done so.

Although the experts consulted admit that happiness evaluations are not an exact science – as is the case with any social science – they emphasize that they are not a mere statistical exercise: they are a tool to detect structural strengths and weaknesses and trends on what society needs to live with more satisfaction. Only with data, they insist, can governments be required to act to enhance what guarantees people's happiness and eliminate what undermines it. Perhaps, then, the key to it all is not so much knowing who is happier as understanding why and what makes it possible — and impossible — for us to be.