It’s not a secret that Greeks get unhappier year by year and everybody living here can confirm that the Greek society is emotionally and economically exhausted after 15 years of austerity and salaries stagnation, a constant increasing cost of living, a bureaucracy that gets more and more absurd despite digitazion, decreasing public services and higher cost for health services and mistrust to institutions have made the society egocentric, angry and unhappy.
Individualism has prevailed as an attitude of life, people preoccupate with themselves and their close family circle and indifferent to others.The narrowly understood individual interest prevails at the expense of the common good. The results of individualism are injustice, exploitation and indifference to others.
Now the Happiness Index report 2025 has come to confirm what we already know: Greece dropped 17 positions within just one year and ranks 81st below countries one could describe as “third world.”
According to the Happiness Index report, Nordic countries lead again in the category “Happiness and Benevolence” with Finland still first among them.
Country rankings for the three benevolent acts covered by the Gallup World Poll – donating, volunteering, and helping strangers – vary depending on cultural and institutional differences.
Review of previous findings
- Research shows that the wellbeing benefits of benevolent acts depend on why and how people do things for others.
- Both helpers and recipients experience greater happiness from caring and sharing in the context of three Cs: caring connections, choice, and clear positive impact.
Our new results on caring and sharing
- During 2024, the COVID-era surge in benevolent acts fell significantly but remains more than 10% higher than 2017–19 levels almost everywhere.
- In 2024, helping strangers remains significantly higher than in 2017–19 in all global regions, by a global average of 18%.
- Expecting kindness from others is a stronger predictor of happiness than major actual or expected harms (Figure 2.4).
- People are too pessimistic about the kindness of their communities. The return rate of lost wallets is much higher than people expect, especially in the Nordic countries, which have the highest rates of both expected and actual wallet returns.
- Engaging in benevolent acts and expecting kindness from others both matter for individual happiness levels. The effect of expected wallet return is almost twice as large as for the frequency of benevolent acts (Figure 2.4).
- Across countries, expected wallet return significantly predicts the return of wallets dropped in experiments.
- Happiness inequality within countries has increased by about one-quarter over the past two decades, while happiness inequality between countries has remained roughly constant (Figure 2.5).
- Expected fairness and kindness reduce happiness inequality and add to the benefits of trust and social connections (Figures 2.6 and 2.7).
PS It was only a few night ago, when I watched an old film from 1941: “Meet John Doe” with Gary Cooper. The film is about mobilization of simple, average people to help each other in their communities. I was impressed.
At the end of the day, Happiness is not to just have “a little bit of wine, a little bit of sea and the one you love” as a Greek song from the 1990’s claimed in Eurovision.
We have become an estranged society and this makes us unhappy, after all.
Thanks for the movie. You also like to watch old movies?
It is true what you wrote about how estranged societies have become. That not only is true for Greece, although I don’t notice that when I am there for holiday. I find the Greek friendly. Quirky at times but I have never been treated badly. People in Serbia, and certainly Belgrade, have become estranged as well. The transition to a market economy combined with social and economic hardship has caused that. And people are fed up with that. There is more solidarity since the protests there have begun.
But people in Western Europe have also become estranged and they mistake their golden cages for happiness. And there is a lot of loneliness there.
Happiness is defined by the relationships you have with others.
1) yes 2) holidays is not normal life 3) we’re friendly to strangers 4) try life in a big city
True all that.
Try Belgrade. Not much different from Athens although Athens is larger.
I moved back to Athens in November 2020. Do I regret it? Yes and No. Did my happiness get loss? YES! I faced a lot of racism after lockdown and still continuing today. I’m half greek, half british. People in Athens changed a lot. They are rude, ignorant and bloody f@cking @ssholes. There are no other words to describe the situation a bit more nice. Yes, of course they are f@cking over friendly to tourists because they want their money! That’s it! I am refusing to have conversations in greek because there is no reason anymore to be proud to speak the language or to be a greek!!! I am ashamed to be greek and my father too! He forbid me to talk in greek due to the circumstances how the Greeks treat me in Athens! You’re a tourist? Enjoy your stay, the beaches, islands and so on…BUT don’t think the Greeks are kind and friendly…they are @ssholes! Don’t believe me? Move to Greece and you will see what I am talking about!