The results of the Estonian Social Survey show that Estonian people are happier than Latvians and Lithuanians but not nearly as happy as the residents of Finland and Sweden.
“The Estonian Social Survey asked respondents to assess how often they had felt happy during the previous four weeks. It appears that, in general, Europeans are happy, since 64% of the respondents across Europe feel happy always or most of the time,” explained Anet Müürsoo, Head of Population and Social Statistics Department at Statistics Estonia. On the other hand, the share of those who are happy rarely or never is less than a tenth (8.6%). “About a quarter of Europeans (25.8%) feel happy some of the time,” she said.
The European countries with the happiest people
In Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and the Netherlands, more than three quarters of the population feel happy all or most of the time. “Among the Baltic countries, Estonia has the happiest people – half of the Estonian population (50.1%) are happy always or most of the time, about a third (35.3%) feel happy sometimes, about a tenth (11.3%) are rarely happy, and 3.3% are never happy,” said Müürsoo.
The map is based on Eurostat data. Persons answering ‘always’ or ‘most of the time’ have been combined into a single group. Source: Statistics Estonia
She noted that, in Lithuania, 48.1% of the people are happy always or most of the time, 32.3% are happy sometimes, 9.2% are rarely happy, and 2.5% are never happy. In Latvia, about 36.8% of the population are happy all or most of the time, a slightly bigger share – 38.4% – feel happy some of the time, 16.6% rarely feel happy, and 6.4% are never happy.
Finland and Sweden are far ahead
“However, compared with our Nordic neighbours Finland and Sweden, the people in Estonia are not as happy. As much as 74% of Finnish people and 69.3% of the Swedish population are happy always or most of the time,” said Müürsoo. She added that 19.4% and 23.8% of the population in Finland and Sweden, respectively, feel happy sometimes, 5.4% and 6.1% rarely feel happy, and 0.8% and 0.9% never feel happy.
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