ABSTRACT
In early 2023, when we were finalising this book’s manuscript, Finland was re-selected as the happiest country in the world for the sixth year in a row (Helliwell et al., 2023). The Nordic Welfare State Model has often been considered superior to other models in terms of equality (see Kangas and Karonen, 2022), which is an important aspect to bear in mind to understand disability at both the policy and practice levels. However, the overall impression of Finns as the happiest people in the world, generously protected by the welfare state regime, does not in fact extend to everyone living here: Many persons with disabilities do not necessarily experience this happiness, not only because of the sustainability challenge posed by the ageing population, but for many other reasons. Our excellent, illustratively diverse book chapters look at Finland from the critical perspective of disability and show that the country does not seem to deserve the status of the happiest country in the world. For too many persons with disabilities, inequality and poverty are an integral part of the disability phenomenon in Finland in many ways, in their personal daily lives and across diverse sectors. Our studies show that disability is manifested on a number of levels in the lives of persons with disabilities, as emotional, social, political, and structural layers.
