(20 Mar 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Helsinki – 20 March 2025
1. Wide of people swimming in outdoor pool
2. Man doing squats by pool
3. People walking
4. Men looking at ferry
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Aino Virolainen, digital commerce director:
"I have lived also abroad. And I want to maybe sometimes live for a while, but this is where I always want to come back to and where I want to, you know, grow my kids and grow old myself. And I think it’s because, you know, the peace and the quietness and the trustworthiness. You know, how we speak directly and the nature, of course. It’s clean and the air is fresh and what’s there not to love?"
6. Various of people walking
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Jouni Purhonen, Helsinki resident:
"We are really calm. So we have the time to think about things like live our life really peacefully and I guess easily, if you will."
8. People walking near tramway
9. People walking down the street
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Alexandra Peth, managing director:
"People trust each other in Finland and I think on many levels in the society, we try to support each other. So I think the system makes it kind of that you can trust it somehow."
11. Woman walking with stroller
12. Ferry sailing away
STORYLINE:
Finland has been named the happiest country in the world for the eighth year in a row, according to the World Happiness Report 2025 published Thursday.
Besides Finland, fellow Nordics Denmark, Iceland and Sweden take top spots in the annual report published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford.
Country rankings were based on answers people give when asked to rate their own lives.
The study was conducted in partnership with the analytics firm Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
Helsinki resident Aino Virolainen, a digital commerce director, has lived abroad but says she will always come back to her native Finland.
She cites the peace and quiet and the Finns’ direct way of communicating as reasons for wanting to raise her kids and grow old there.
"And the nature, of course," she said "It’s clean and the air is fresh and what’s there not to love?"
Researchers say that beyond health and wealth, some factors that influence happiness sound deceptively simple: sharing meals with others, having somebody to count on for social support, and household size.
In Mexico and Europe, for example, a household size of four to five people predicts the highest levels of happiness, the study said.
Believing in the kindness of others is also much more closely tied to happiness than previously thought, according to the latest findings.
As an example, the report suggests that people who believe that others are willing to return their lost wallet is a strong predictor of the overall happiness of a population.
Nordic nations rank among the top places for expected and actual return of lost wallets, the study found.
"People trust each other in Finland and I think on many levels in the society, we try to support each other," explained Alexandra Peth a Helsinki-based managing director.
The U.S. falls to its lowest-ever position in the happiness ranking.
While European countries dominate the top 20 in the ranking, there were some exceptions.
Despite the war with Hamas, Israel came in at 8th. Costa Rica and Mexico entered the top 10 for the first time, ranking at 6th and 10th respectively.
The United Kingdom, at position 23, is reporting its lowest average life evaluation since the 2017 report.
AP video by Kostya Manekov
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