Christina was unhappy at her job in advertising and took an eight-month break.
Christina:
Social Security is also something I think is very important. What I did didn’t make me happy and it didn’t let me have the work-life balance that we cherish so much here. And so we have a system that made it possible for me to quit my job and have some thinking time and figure out, you know, what’s my next step in life.
Reporter:
Christina received about $2,000 a month from the Danish government while she was unemployed. She is now in school to become a painter. Her tuition is covered and she receives an educational stipend of about $1,000 a month.
Two of the biggest perks of life in Denmark and Finland are free education and free health care.
Christina:
Income taxes are not at all as high in the Nordic countries that Americans tend to think. However, overall, it is completely true that the Nordic countries collect more taxes in general than the United States does.
Reporter:
In Finland and the Nordic countries, there are higher taxes on consumption, like eating in restaurants and buying jeans.
Christina:
But the things that I think a lot of Americans forget is that the Nordic people are happy to pay those taxes because they get services in return. Day care, great public education. It includes your college tuition, free. It includes healthcare, all of those are included in your taxes. When the news hit that Financial is the happiest country in the world, I think most people kind of reacted to it, like, what are they talking about? We don’t think of ourselves as very happy because it’s dark and gloomy in the winter and whatever. It’s easier for Finns and Danes to shape their lives because the government supports so many of their basic needs.
The American dream is probably more alive in Denmark. The perception of freedom is probably also a little bit different. It seems like in the U.S. the feeling is you have to be protected from the government and you have to have freedom from the government. I think in Denmark the sense is that the government protects you. People trust other people. You leave a bag in a restaurant in Finland, you’re pretty sure you’re going to make it back and the money is still there. People even leave babies parked in strollers outside coffee shops while they run errands. And I think partly the Nordic society cultivates that trust simply by providing basic services for everyone. So there's much less poverty, much less feelings of injustice, inequality, crime. People get the education they need. They can have a job. They can work. They don’t have to struggle in life as much. There isn‘t super wealth and there’s absolutely no super poverty. Everybody participates. It turns out it leads to a wonderful kind of life and one that is expressed, year after year, as making these countries the happiest countries in the world.