{As the world marks the third annual International Day of Happiness on Friday, the recent Gallup findings show that Rwanda is among countries where the highest percentages of people are experiencing positive emotions daily.}
Rwanda is in the same category with the United States, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Argentina, Bhutan, Chile, Dominican Republic where all racked up scores of 79 per cent.
The Report ranks Rwanda on 23rd position among 143 countries surveyed.
In fact, for the first time in Gallup’s 10-year history of global tracking, all of the top 10 countries with the highest Positive Experience Index scores are in Latin America.
Gallup asked adults in 143 countries in 2014 if they had five positive experiences on the day before the survey. More than 70% of people worldwide said they experienced a lot of enjoyment, smiled or laughed a lot, felt well-rested and felt treated with respect. Additionally, 50% of people said they learned or did something interesting the day before the interview. Gallup compiles the “yes” responses from these five questions into a Positive Experience Index score for each country. The index score for the world in 2014 is 71 and has remained remarkably consistent through the years.
Perhaps the most surprising finding from the countries in the world with the fewest people reporting positive emotions is that a place such as war-torn Afghanistan still has majorities of people saying that they smiled or laughed a lot the day before the interview — perhaps testimony of the resiliency of the human spirit. Conflict-ridden South Sudan and Ukraine and Ebola-stricken Liberia were one to two points from being on this undistinguished bottom 10 list. Syria, the country with the lowest positive emotions ever reported last year, is absent from this list only because this report was issued before those data were finalized.
Gallup’s Positive Experience Index is designed to measure the things GDP was not intended to measure. In addition to quantifying things such as respect, laughing and smiling a lot, and learning or doing something interesting — some of the key drivers of positive emotions are things such as freedom, social capital and charitable giving — all things that make a life worth living. Money also clearly plays an important role in people’s daily emotions. Research in the U.S. finds that money significantly affects these emotions, but only to a point. After an individual makes $75,000 per year, money has much less of an effect on daily emotions.
Money isn’t everything in life. Guatemala is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranking 118th in terms of GDP (nominal) per capita, yet when it comes to positive emotions, it ties for second. There is much to be learned from Latin America on this International Day of Happiness because while they aren’t the wealthiest people in the world, they are certainly among the happiest.
*The mean for the Middle East and North Africa region does not include GCC countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait.
{{Survey Methods}}
Results are based on telephone and face-to-face interviews with approximately 1,000 adults in each country, aged 15 and older, conducted in 2014 in 143 countries and areas. For results based on the total global sample, the margin of sampling error is less than ±1 percentage point at the 95% confidence level. For results based on country-level samples, the margin of error ranges from a low of ±2.1 to a high of ±5.3. The margin of error reflects the influence of data weighting. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
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