News

S’pore is Ranked 27th in the Latest World Happiness Report 2022

2022-03-20 , 12:55 pm

If you’re still wondering why everyone around you looks so gloomy, you might not even think that they’re being gloomy after you see this statistic.

Yup, Singapore came in 27th out of 146 countries in the World Happiness Report 2022.

Before you go off ranting, “Huh?! How can?” and dismiss the report as absolutely incorrect, here’s what you need to know about the report and how it measures happiness.

What the Report Measures

The World Happiness Report utilises three main well-being indicators to measure well-being: life evaluations, positive emotions and negative emotions.

Life Evaluations

For life evaluations, which is the “principal source of data” for the report, the Cantril ladder approach is used to determine participants’ wellbeing.

Respondents are asked to “evaluate their current life as a whole using the mental image
of a ladder, with the best possible life for them as a 10 and worst possible as a 0”. They then provide a number that best represents their current life situation.

Around 1,000 responses from each country are taken and a three-year average is used in this case in order to “provide more precise estimates”.

Positive Emotions

Next, for positive emotions, respondents will be asked three questions and provide yes or no answers.

The three questions are if they have experienced laughter, enjoyment, and learning or doing something interesting in the past day.

Negative Emotions

On the other hand, the value for negative emotions is also determined through three questions.

Individuals provide yes or no answers to the following questions: If they have experienced worry, anger or sadness in the past day.

Other Countries’ Performances

And of course, because we’re incredibly competitive, we’ve got to see how others do as well.

This year, Finland retained its spot as the happiest country on Earth, while Iceland and Switzerland came in second and third respectively.

Well, if you’re thinking of migrating to another country, maybe you’ll have a few more countries to consider after reading the report.

Meanwhile, our neighbouring countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and China ranked 70th, 87th and 72nd respectively.

Afghanistan took last place this year, with other contenders including Lebanon and Zimbabwe.

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COVID-19 and its Impact on Happiness

For the past two reports, the researchers responsible for curating the report have harped on the fact that they have been trying to see how COVID-19 affects individual wellbeing.

Factors such as disease exposure, COVID-19 deaths and other similar factors were taken into consideration.

According to the report, “countries where people trusted their governments and each other experienced lower COVID-19 death tolls and set the stage for maintaining or rebuilding a sense of common purpose to deliver happier, healthier and more sustainable lives”.

So whenever the gahmen asks you to do something, just do lah. It’ll make you happier in one way or another, I guess.