"The ability to count on others are major supports to life evaluations, especially in times of crises."
This year’s World Happiness Report, published by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and which used data from the Gallup World Poll and Lloyd’s Register Foundation, was released under circumstances starkly different from those in previous years.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a major recurring theme in the attempt to measure the happiness of people in various countries.
The results, however, were not much changed: The same countries that were the happiest in previous years were also the happiest this year: Respondents from Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Austria fared well during this health crisis as they did before we first learned about the novel coronavirus. Their performance was determined by various factors: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceptions of corruption, among others.
Earlier reports have also established that individuals with high social and institutional trust levels were happier than those living in less trusting and trustworthy environments.
The Philippines ranked 61st among 149 countries surveyed.
What stood out in this year’s survey was the finding that trust and the ability to count on others are major supports to life evaluations, especially in times of crises. The survey found that the so-called wallet question – the feeling that your hypothetical lost wallet would be returned to you if found by a police officer, neighbor or stranger—was a greater predictor of happiness than income, unemployment or even major health risks.
Moreover, institutional trust also explained the disparity in various countries’ response to the pandemic, specifically in curbing death rates.
Confidence in public institutions also topped the list of factors supporting successful COVID-19 strategies. Other factors were income inequality, the ability to learn from the experience of SARS in 2003, whether the head of government was a woman, the median age of the population, whether the country was an island, and exposure to other countries during the early days of the pandemic.
These results all point to the fact that people will not feel defeated by crisis, COVID-19 or otherwise, so long as they feel they can trust the system to be just and fair and to make good decisions on their behalf.
The pandemic has shaken people’s lives to the core and has introduced changes in the way we live. The knowledge that the people around us can be trusted to do the right thing and go out of their way in doing so will indeed determine whether we feel that we are empowered to overcome any crisis, or that we are stuck in a rut not knowing when—or if—we could ever get out.
