It seems like being happy is en vogue in the international media these days. Desde crackdown on Iranian youth making a video to Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” to various indices ranking the level of happiness of people living in the countries around the world, the debate over happiness is on.
Surprisingly (or not) the recent indices come up with somewhat different sets of rankings. To my joy, the latest poll by Gallup, done with 1,500 people from each of 138 países, put four of the places I have lived or worked among the top 10 happiest places in the world (Panamá, El Salvador, Honduras y Guatemala).
The odd juxtaposition is that these are also four countries that have been part of Creative’s joint programming with USAID that works to reduce the high levels of violence.
How does that mesh – when the people interviewed from a variety of income levels expressed high levels of “enjoyment,” “laughing or smiling a lot” and feeling “well-rested,” while also living in three of the countries (El Salvador, Honduras y Guatemala) with the highest murder rates globalmente?
I was surprised with such positive responses from Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Hondurans to the happiness surveys given high level of gang violence and extortion by gangs. Notablemente, violence likely contributed to the fact that the least happy people according to this year’s survey, understandably so, are Syrians, Chadians and Yemenis.
