THE Philippines ranked third among the happiest countries of the world, the latest Gallup International global year-end poll revealed Tuesday, retaining the third spot with a +84 net happiness score in the top 10 happiest countries of 2017.
The poll showed a five-point increase for the Philippines, which recorded a +79 net happiness score in the year 2016. The country was also at third place in the previous survey.
Fiji topped last year’s Happiness Index at +92, followed by Colombia in second spot at +87.
Mexico came fourth +82, followed by Vietnam (+77), Kazakhstan (+74), Papua New Guinea (+74), Indonesia (+68), India (+64), and Argentina and Netherlands (+64).
Level of optimism in Philippines remained high at +40 percent, placing ninth in the Hope Index.
Economic Optimism, meanwhile, is at +32, placing fifth among countries who were optimistic the economy would be better in 2018.
Overall, Gallup noted the world became lonelier as only 59 percent of survey respondents said they were happy in 2017.
The polling body said this was almost 10 points lower than the result in 2016.
“2017 was a tough year with terrorist attacks over almost each week and it may have influenced personal lives all around the world. Nevertheless, a majority in all polled countries are happy,” Gallup said in its report.
While 28 percent of the world was optimistic for the economic outlook in 2018, economic pessimism was at 30 percent, with a net score of -2 for 2017.
Moreover, only 40 percent of those felt that 2018 would be better than 2017, which was 13 points down compared to last year.
The latest survey, from Nov. 16 to 29 in the Philippines, was fielded among 1,000 respondents.
The sampling margin of error was between +3 and 5 percent at 95 percent confidence level.
