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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | India droops on happiness list by GS Mudur

India droops on happiness list by GS Mudur

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published Published on Jul 3, 2010   modified Modified on Jul 3, 2010

The world’s largest study exploring the link between wealth and happiness has revealed a deficit of trust and social-psychological well-being in India that scientists believe could exacerbate the psychological effects of poverty.

India ranks low — 85th among 89 countries — on social-psychological strengths assessed through questions such as whether people feel respected or whether they have close family or friends they can turn to for help. Yet India has relatively low levels of anger and depression, according to the survey of more than 1,36,800 people from 132 countries jointly carried out by the Gallup Organisation and researchers in the US and Singapore.

The survey has shown that money does indeed increase satisfaction with life, but wealth is less important for positive feelings or for fun or the enjoyment of life for which social relationships appear more important.

“Money across nations has a large effect on life satisfaction,” said Ed Deiner, a senior scientist with the Gallup Organisation and the University of Illinois. The findings will appear this month in the Journal of Personality and Social Development. However, even poor people may be well off on social relationships or other factors that contribute to positive feelings and enjoyment.

The survey appears to corroborate the findings of a study of homeless people of Calcutta conducted by Diener four years ago, which suggested that good social relationships may protect people from harmful psychological effects of poverty. “Pavement dwellers in Calcutta tend to exist in intact family units and these relationships might help buffer them from the dire effects of poverty,” Robert Biswas-Diener, (Ed) Diener’s son, and a co-author of the earlier study said.

The splitting of happiness into life satisfaction and other components — positive feelings, or enjoyment, or good social relationships — makes it difficult to list any country as the happiest or unhappiest.

The US has the highest income among the 132 countries, but was 16 on the life satisfaction score, and 26 on positive feelings. Denmark is also not the happiest because it ranked 1 on life satisfaction, but 7 on positive feelings.

South Korea is wealthy, but scores badly in negative feelings such as anger or depression. Israel is high on income and life satisfaction (11), but scores poorly on positive feelings and negative feelings.

“Surprisingly, India ranks low on social-psychological strengths,” Ed Diener told The Telegraph in an interview. “In nations that score well on this, corruption is usually low too. People trust each other — even strangers.”

Ed Diener predicts that India’s growing economy is likely to raise life satisfaction if most Indians can participate to some degree in the prosperity. “But material aspirations must not outpace the growth in income, or economic growth can actually decrease life satisfaction.”


The Telegraph, 3 July, 2010, http://telegraphindia.com/1100703/jsp/nation/story_12641176.jsp


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