Happiness is the ugly stepchild of economics. It’s a useful metric that adds nuanced contours to any nation’s picture. But many economists still pretend it doesn’t exist, preferring to shove it into the cupboard while they play with favoured, less temperamental measures such as GDP.
After a long road it has steadily entrenched itself in the mainstream. The World Happiness Report — the UN barometer that has been published since 2012 — invariably generates a few headlines when it is released each year. Finland has reigned atop the index for the past eight years, emboldening a fitness faction that swears by sauna as the key to a good life.
The 2026 edition will be released this Friday, March 20, on the International Day of Happiness (don’t expect a day off from your employer though). It arrives at a time when the world is decidedly not a happy place. The Middle East has been turned into a battleground. The rest of the world is feeling the effects: energy prices are soaring, setting off long domino chains of high prices and tumbling values.
For as hollow as it feels to celebrate “happiness” right now, this year’s report — which would have been put together before the US and Israel went to war with Iran — may well serve as a baseline to measure how profoundly the world is changing. Consider the United Arab Emirates, a country that has taken the happiness metric very seriously.
It appointed a happiness minister 10 years ago. The announcement was ridiculed at the time, much in the same way the South African government was when it announced the creation of an electricity minister. Yet, like that position, the results have unmistakably materialised.
The UAE has steadily occupied a lofty position in the ranking. It reached a high of 21 last year. It is comfortably first in the region and ahead of many European economies, as well as other Western democracies such as the UK and US. (As a side note, one can only think that many migrant workers in the country, who face well-documented abuses, are not all that happy.)
For as hollow as it feels to celebrate “happiness” right now, this year’s report — which would have been put together before the US and Israel went to war with Iran — may well serve as a baseline to measure how profoundly the world is changing.
Common wisdom suggests that a good life might now be under threat. Those of us blessed to live in peaceful parts of the world can only imagine how terrifying it must be to live with the booms of intercepted missiles. Economically, Dubai’s hard-earned reputation as one of the world’s leading connection hubs has been hit hard, and it may well take some time for travellers to overcome their trepidation en masse.
Meanwhile, many analysts are also being kept awake at night by the prospect of simmering tensions with Saudi Arabia one day boiling over. Such dangers notwithstanding, no-one ever really knows how a nation’s psyche can change in the face of conflict. Adolf Hitler wagered that a relentless civilian bombing campaign on Britain would break its people’s spirit and force a surrender. It had the opposite effect, steeling resolve and breeding unity of purpose.
Even Finland, the perpetual happiness leader, can speak to the idea. Most news reports on the rankings focus on its healthy living habits, high GDP per capita, and excellent social democratic programmes. But it’s rarely mentioned that Finland is one of the most highly militarised societies on the planet. It has to be: it shares a 1,340km-long border with Russia and has endured an uneasy, highly suspicious relationship with its far larger neighbour for over a century.
Serving as a deterrent is a reservist force of about 900,000, which is particularly remarkable given a population of just over 5.66-million. While an active war is an entirely different concept, there are more factors than just cold-plunge enthusiasm that have woven the fabric of Finnish society.
And then there is the possibility of the Happiness Report itself becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. A study released last week by the Stockholm School of Economics, based on 8,000 survey responses, looked at the effect it is having on individuals in Nordic countries. In some places, perceptions of happiness increased after reading about their high ranking in the annual report.
To the contrary, in Finland the study found evidence of life satisfaction decreasing to a small but significant degree. When you’re constantly told how happy your community is, it’s easy to start questioning your own circumstances when they are not quite perfect. The researchers coined the term “happycondria” to represent that unique pressure.
Of course, the rest of the globe will argue that they have long had their own phrase: First-World problems.
• Feltham is Business Day editor-in-chief.
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