Taiwan’s happiness ranking remains unchanged at 18 worldwide this year, while its overall score dropped 0.17 points to 6.76, due to growing food safety concerns and accidental deaths, the annual survey by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) showed yesterday.
Last year, the nation ranked first in the region, ahead of South Korea at 5.31 points and Japan at 6.02 points, the report said.
The happiness index measures the public’s degree of satisfaction with their well-being. Taiwan stands in the upper-middle tier, compared with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) 34 member nations and two OECD partners Russia and Brazil.
The DGBAS attributed the mild decline in the overall score to a general retreat recorded among a total of 28 nations.
In terms of material life, Taiwan showed no change based on income and wealth, and fell one berth in living conditions and two berths in jobs and earnings, the survey found.
Taiwan ranked fifth this year in terms of personal safety, the area where the public feels the happiest though the showing is one notch lower from last year, the survey said.
The environment continued to be an area where people showed the lowest level of satisfaction with a ranking of 35, due to a red signal for air and water pollution, the survey indicated.
As for local indices, median disposable income picked up this year while employment among young people showed an improvement, the DGBAS said, adding that a stable job market and wage increases accounted for the uptrend.
Australia continued to outperform other surveyed countries at 8.02 points this year, followed by Sweden at 7.96 and Norway at 7.95, the survey said.
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