By Brad Young, money player
According to a new report, Finland is the happiest nation in the world.
People who live in Finland rated their life satisfaction on average 7.7/10, compared to 6.7 in Great Britain in a survey of more than 150,000 people in 147 countries.
Nordic nations dominated the top of the table in the World Happiness Report at Oxford University with Denmark, Iceland and Sweden on 2nd, 3rd and 4th, while Great Britain fell by three places in the 20th last year.
Great Britain was overtaken by Slovenia, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates and Germany and is now sitting right behind the latter and shortly before the United States. Afghanistan is the most unfortunate country in the world, followed by Sierra Leone and Lebanon.
It is the eighth year in a row in which Finland is analyzed in a report in which human wealth, social ties, health, trust, freedom and generosity are analyzed.
According to experts, expats and citizens, it is important to explain why Finland is happier than the United Kingdom, differences in work culture, wealth distribution and the cost of living.
Here we take a look at how this affected people who have lived in both nations.
Working culture
“In many ways it is undeniable as much better,” says Kjartan Kelly, 31, a personal trainer who moved from Cardiff to Tampere, a city of around 200,000 in South Finland.
“Working culture is definitely healthier than in Great Britain, that is certain,” he says, adding that better wages and rights of employees allow people to be more free time.
He refers to more generous vacation and parent holidays.
Each parent is entitled to almost 23 weeks of vacation and pays with a complicated formula based on income. This means that a worker who earns £ 25,000 a year is entitled to 53 GBP on a working day.
In Great Britain, fathers are legally entitled to two weeks paid for a vacation with £ 184 per week or 90% of their salary, depending on which value is lower. Mothers are entitled to 52 weeks of maternity leave: 39 weeks that were paid at the same price as men.
Kjartan, a former soldier of the British army, says that Finnish employers feel a greater feeling of commitment to their employees, which he has partially depressed in the country's obligatory military service.
“Let us assume that they found a company and they employ people, they will use their workers less if they have cried with them through the snow and the mud.
“There is not so much class attitude in Great Britain.”
Sara Karpanen, 37, says that the adaptation to the British work culture was the largest learning curve with which she was exposed to London from the city of Hyvinkaa, South Finland in 2013.
“I am always amazed at how the Finnish people dominate this balance between work and life,” says Sara, art program director at the Finnish Institute.
“It is not necessarily that Finnish people work less, I think we actually work more efficiently.”
Offices are usually empty at 4 p.m., “” So there is enough time to live a life outside of work, “she says.
Paid overtime is more common, so it is less common for companies to ask employees to stay in the office.
It is of the opinion that there is an expectation in Great Britain that employees “primarily prioritize the work” and a culture that “emphasizes Hustle”.
But for all British sold on the Finnish approach, it is not always easy sailing.
Daniel Beech moved from Colchester to Helsinki in 2004 to live with his wife. “The attempt to work here, if you don't speak Finnish and do not work in it, is a massive fight,” he says.
Discharges and the latest cuts in the unemployed services made the situation “last year” much worse, he says.
Unemployment in Finland is growing, says Finnish economist Jan Otto Andersson, who wrote academic papers about happiness in the country.
According to Statistics Finland, it rose to 9.5% in January, compared to 4.4% in Great Britain.
The Finnish government's latest spending cuts have also contributed to increasing poverty, says Jan, former professor at the City of London Polytechnic and the Finnish University of Akademi.
Finnish media reports report on the right government that introduces cuts in social benefits and social health services.
“So there are many things that could make someone less happy,” says Jan.
Wealth, taxes and welfare
The International Monetary Fund sets the British GDP – the value of all goods and services – at 3.73 TN compared to Finlands 319.99 billion.
This works on a similar level per capita -38,130 GBP in Great Britain and £ 40,800 in Finland -since the British population is 12.4 -higher.
But Jan-Emmanuel de Neve, editor of the World Happiness Report, says that these numbers “hide great inequalities” that influence well-being.
Most of the Finns' assets hovers around the average GDP, while the average in Great Britain is deceptively high due to some people with a lot of prosperity.
“Scandinavia was very good at worrying people at the bottom of the Wellbeing scale, and that is a combination of income and mental illnesses. The welfare state that enables redistribution,” he says.
The redistribution is financed by a few higher taxes. VAT is levied at 25.5% (compared to 20% in Great Britain), the payments of social security are approximately 9.3% (compared to 8% national insurance tax) and income tax is divided into six bands of up to 55%, compared to four bands of up to 45% in the UK.
“When I moved to Finland for the first time, I always felt a bit funny when I had to pay higher taxes,” says Darren Trofimczuk, 47, from Tunbridge Wells, who lived in Jarvenpaa near Helsinki between 2012 and 2023.
“But over time, I realized that they can actually trust the Finnish system,” says the father of two.
“You feel comfortable [higher taxes] Because the money is reinvested so that they felt much safer in the system, “said Darren, who added the government to his master's degree.
Education is free of charge at all levels in Finland. At the university, EU citizens who want to study there belong.
Jan-Emmanuel says that a country as soon as a country becomes as rich as Finland or Great Britain, GDP growth no longer leads to more luck.
It must be redistributed in such a way that people's well -being serves, he says, while Keir Starrer and Rachel Reeves seem to concentrate on “growth for reasons of growth”.
According to Daniel Sazonov, deputy mayor of Helsinki, Finns has seen and felt “the advantages” of the Nordic welfare model “(which guarantees a high degree of access to fundamental services and a wide safety net) and this is reflected in the results of the World Happiness Report.
“You see opportunities, opportunities for yourself and your children and you always have a trust that you have a welfare system and the social security system when life is not planned as planned.”
In view of the praise for his welfare system, you can be surprised to find out that one of the key components, the healthcare system, is not strictly free.
The vast majority is financed tax, but patients have to pay small fees, e.g. B. 20 € for a GP appointment, € 10 for dentists or up to € 50 for recipes or inpatient hospital care.
For comparison: the appointment of a dentist in the UK costs £ 26.80, while the recipes cost £ 9.90 per article and of course GP and hospital visits are free.
Finland achieves a little better in terms of healthy life expectancy (HLE), which affects the lucky values, says Jan-Emmanuel.
The latest data from the World Health Organization in 2021 at the age of 69.9 was the average HLE in Finland, while it was 68.6 years in Great Britain.
Living costs
When Darren Trofimczuk returned to Great Britain, he was “shocked” by what he found.
So much more expensive was the cost of living that he told his wife Elina and her two children that they should not follow him, as originally planned.
“I was shocked. It has always been a much more expensive country in Finland for eleven years. But I think it's the other way around.”
While Finnish inflation has generally been traveling under Great Britain in the past five years, it has moved further down in the past few months, whereby the United Kingdom has a rate of 2.8% in February, compared to 0.5% in Finland.
Darren says he needed a year to find a one-bed apartment near London, who competed against queues from other applicants to pay more than £ 1,000 a month.
It is the same price as the mortgage for his house with three beds directly outside the Finnish capital with a large garden.
Personnel trainer Kjartan, who is currently buying a house, agrees: “You really don't work that difficult with Finnish wages. You only have to work for a few years.”
The same home price data is not available for Great Britain and Finland.
The Finnish government's statistics authority states that the average price (without new buildings) was 2,174 GBP per square meter in the last quarter of 2024 and rose to 4,130 GBP for new builds.
The British real estate price index receives the costs for an average house at 268,548 GBP, but the British statistical authorities have no longer published any data for a square meter since 2016.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and the Local Government in 2019 measured the average ground of an English house and found that it is 94 meters square. In this measure and today's average housing price, the costs of a British house would be around 2,857 GBP per square meter.
Apart from the apartment, Darren found in both countries that energy and food in both countries were about the same price, but transport has proven to be more expensive in Great Britain.
Every year he makes a 500-mile train trip from Helsinki to Rovaniemi for a Lapland fishing ride that costs £ 18.50. During the main traffic time, the 34-mile trip from Tunbridge Wells to London bridge resets him with £ 31.
Common changes to the cost of living, since many in Great Britain on April 1, if most budget calculations rise, Darren are more difficult to save than in Finland.
“You always live a bit nervous, as you never know that your job is safe, or will there be a further increase in something?”
He believes that every money that has been put away is only in the “standby” mode to absorb the next financial shock instead of planning for the future.