A survey released yesterday showed that Penghu County topped this year’s happiness index, building on high levels of life satisfaction with strong improvements on objective measures of living quality.
Based on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Better Life Index, the happiness index, conducted by the Chinese-language Economic Daily News and NanShan Life Insurance Co, brings together a range of subjective and objective variables for each of the nation’s 22 counties and cities, with survey results and official data each accounting for half of the index score.
Penghu scored 68.7 on the index’s 100-point scale, driven by strong levels of life satisfaction, a low crime rate and high savings, the survey showed.
Next were Hsinchu County on 68 and Miaoli County on 65.2. Yunlin County performed worst on the index with a score of 25.8.
Penghu also outperformed other areas in how much it moved up in the rankings, the survey showed, moving up five places from last year. Penghu’s increase was closely followed by Taoyuan and Hualien counties, whose rankings moved up by four and three places respectively.
Taipei’s ranking fell the most, dropping seven places to ninth with a score of 55.3, the survey showed.
Taipei was first for objective measures of quality of life, but its ranking was dragged down by discontent on variables such as housing conditions and work/life balance.
The survey showed that nationwide, satisfaction was highest for housing conditions and social ties, and lowest for environmental conditions and government performance.
“The economy has been doing better recently, causing unemployment to fall and improving stock market performance,” Economic Daily News president Huang Su-chuan (黃素娟) said. “When the economy is better, people feel better overall, influencing every aspect of the survey and causing satisfaction levels to increase.”
The survey, conducted between July 14 and Aug. 22, polled 22,528 people nationwide. With the exception of Kinmen and Lienchiang counties, which had smaller sample sizes, the margin of error is 3 percentage points.
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