In the past 30 years, many Asian countries have achieved faster economic growth than the rest of the world. Living standards have improved, and many Asian cities are now world-class, transformed by rapid urbanisation.
But according to the World Happiness Report 2015, Asians are not that happy despite better economic achievement (“These are the happiest countries in the world”; April 24, online).
Singapore was ranked 24th, Thailand 34th, Taiwan 38th, Japan 46th, South Korea 47th, Malaysia 61st, Hong Kong 72nd, Indonesia 74th, China 84th, the Philippines 90th and India 117th.
People in Costa Rica (12th), Mexico (14th) and Brazil (16th) are happier than Singaporeans, Japanese or Hong Kongers. Why?
The report noted that the better scores of Latin American nations over Asian nations could be due partly to cultural differences in response style.
In the Economist Intelligence Unit’s quality-of-life index in 2013, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea made it to the top 20.
This also makes me think that Asia’s quality of life is not bad, but that our high expectations have pulled down our happiness scores.
We Asians set for ourselves higher expectations in life. For example, we give higher priority to family life and our children’s education. Questions on expectations could be asked in future surveys, so we can compare scores of happiness against expectations.
Also, to make the results more useful in guiding policymaking — a key objective of the survey — it is important to ask respondents what makes them sometimes unhappy.
