The Philippines moves up the happiness scale

The World Happiness Index 2024, made possible by the cooperation of Gallup, the University of Oxford, and the United Nations, shows that the Philippines is second among Southeast Asian countries after Singapore, which ranks 30th in the world.

Manila (AsiaNews) – The Philippines has improved its ranking in the happiness scale, rising to take second place among Southeast Asian countries after Singapore, this according to the World Happiness Report 2024.

The study, a partnership between Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, and the United Nations Network for Sustainable Development Solutions, seems to confirm the country’s exceptional vitality and resilience.

This is certainly good news. While the country is in 53rd position against Singapore is 30th, this is a major improvement from 76th place in the 2023 report. The index is based on respondent ratings of satisfaction of their own lives on a scale of 1 to 10 over three months.

Family ties and informal support networks are the main factors, but several polls suggest a positive role for the policies of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who took office in June 2022.

One poll last December by the Social Weather Stations, a social research institute, reports a 65 per cent satisfied rating among Filipinos vis-à-vis the president.

Another survey by Octa Research Group, a company set up during the pandemic, gave Marcos a trust rate of 76 per cent with a 71 per cent approval rate for his policies, both up from the previous poll.

The improving happiness index among Filipinos is bucking a trend among the Philippines’s regional “competitors”, most notably Vietnam (54th), economically declining Thailand (58th), Malaysia (59th), Indonesia (80th), Laos (94th), war-torn Myanmar (118th), and Cambodia (119th).

Overall, Southeast Asian countries are ranked in the middle, between highly happy Finns – first for seven years in a row, followed by the Danes, Icelanders, and Swedes – and those at the bottom in Afghanistan, which is preceded by Lebanon, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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