Every year the United Nations publishes a list of the happiest countries in the world. They base this on a three year average of each population’s assessment of their quality of life. In 2025, for the eighth year in a row, Finland has ranked #1. Having never been to Finland, I personally have no idea what the reason is. Reading about the county, however, there are certain reasons consistently mentioned. Here are three I have seen quite a bit:
-Community Cohesion and Trust – When Finns meet new people, they start out from a place of trust. When they lose their wallets, they expect it will be returned- and frequently it is.
-Closeness to Nature – This is a reason that Finns mention frequently; noting how nearly everyone lives within a few minutes walk to a park or forest. I suspect most of us instinctively know that being outdoors makes us feel better. Our National Parks are enormously popular as are outdoors adventures in general. As a seller of various tours and pilgrimages, I know how important the outdoors is to many travelers.
-Family Friendly Policies – Finland has an extremely generous parental leave program that includes 160 days off for new parents- both biological and adoptive. They also spend generously on education and as a result are recognized as one of the top ten countries for raising children.
The rest of the top five countries are Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and the Netherlands. Costa Rica is #6. The US, unfortunately, fell to #24 this year. Shall we get busy working to change that?
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