Emerging Asian nations are finding out what developed ones did years ago: Money — and the stuff it buys — brings happiness, or at least satisfaction.
Levels of self-reported wellbeing in fast-growing nations like Indonesia, China and Malaysia now rival those in the US, Germany and the UK, rich nations that have long topped the happiness charts, according to a Pew Research Center global survey released yesterday.
It says it shows how rises in national income are closely linked to personal satisfaction.
The pollsters asked people in 43 countries to place themselves on a “ladder of life,” with the top rung representing the best possible life and the bottom the worst. Pew carried out the same survey in 2002 and 2005 in most of those countries, enabling researchers to look at trends over time.
However, the data also suggested that there is a limit to how much happiness money can buy. For example, 56 percent of Malaysians rated their life a “seven” or higher on the ladder, significantly more than the 36 percent in Bangladesh, a poor country.
Yet the public in Germany, which has a far higher GDP per capita than Malaysia, expressed a life satisfaction level of 60 percent, just 4 percentage points more than Malaysia.
While wealth appears to contribute to happiness, other research has indicated it is far from the only factor.
Women tend to be happier than man, for example, and unmarried and middle-aged people tend to report lower levels of wellbeing than married and younger people respectively.
The Pew survey results, which were based on 47,643 interviews in 43 countries with adults 18 and older between March and June, also found that people in emerging and developing economies prioritize a few essentials in life, including their health, their children’s education and safety from crime.
Fewer people in those economies said Internet access, car ownership, free time or the ability to travel is very important in their lives.
The survey saw significant gains in personal satisfaction in Indonesia, where 58 percent of those polled placed themselves on the seventh-highest rung of the “ladder of life” or above, up from 23 percent in 2007, and Malaysia, where 56 percent put themselves in that same upper range, up from 36 percent seven years ago. In Vietnam, which was not included in the 2007 survey, 64 percent said they were on the seventh-highest rung or above.
The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan research center that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the US and the world. It is funded by a charitable trust.
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