{"id":187138,"date":"2015-09-30T01:29:43","date_gmt":"2015-09-30T01:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=187138"},"modified":"2017-08-26T19:14:10","modified_gmt":"2017-08-26T18:14:10","slug":"gallup-iraqis-are-the-saddest-one-of-the-angriest-populations-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/gallup-iraqis-are-the-saddest-one-of-the-angriest-populations-in-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"GALLUP: “Iraqis Are the Saddest & One of the Angriest Populations in the World”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

(The above photo is of Uzbekistan’s mountains.)<\/p>\n

The\u00a02015 Global Emotions<\/span><\/a>\u00a0survey from Gallup finds that,\u00a0\u201cIraqis Are the Saddest and One of the Angriest Populations in the World.\u201d Iraq also tops the overall “Negative Experience” score. They explain:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIraq\u2019s high Negative Experience Index score is largely attributable to the relatively high percentages of\u00a0Iraqis who report experiencing each of these negative emotions. Majorities of Iraqis experienced worry\u00a0(62%), physical pain (57%), sadness (57%) and stress (55%) the previous day, and half of Iraqis (50%)\u00a0said they experienced anger. Iraqis lead the world in experiencing sadness and tie with Iran on anger\u00a0(49%).\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This Gallup survey covered 1,000 adults in each of 148 countries during 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cHighest [11] Negative Experience Index Scores 2014\u201d were, in order:<\/span><\/p>\n

Iraq 56<\/span><\/p>\n

Iran 50<\/span><\/p>\n

Cambodia 46<\/span><\/p>\n

Liberia 45<\/span><\/p>\n

South Sudan 44<\/span><\/p>\n

Uganda 43<\/span><\/p>\n

Cyprus 42<\/span><\/p>\n

Greece 42<\/span><\/p>\n

Togo 42<\/span><\/p>\n

Bolivia 41<\/span><\/p>\n

Palestinian Territories 41<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cLowest [10] Negative Experience Index Scores 2014\u201d were:<\/span><\/p>\n

Uzbekistan 12<\/span><\/p>\n

China 15<\/span><\/p>\n

Mongolia 15<\/span><\/p>\n

Myanmar 15<\/span><\/p>\n

Russia 15<\/span><\/p>\n

Taiwan 15<\/span><\/p>\n

Rwanda 16<\/span><\/p>\n

Kazakhstan 17<\/span><\/p>\n

Kyrgyzstan 17<\/span><\/p>\n

Turkmenistan 18<\/span><\/p>\n

Gallup reports: “The Negative and Positive Experience Indexes are not inversely related, so\u00a0countries with the lowest negative scores do not necessarily have the highest\u00a0positive scores. Many of the countries with the lowest scores on the Negative\u00a0Experience Index are post-Soviet states, where people have typically reported both\u00a0some of the lowest negative emotions in the world and some of the lowest positive\u00a0emotions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cHighest [10] Positive Experience Index Scores 2014\u201d were:<\/span><\/p>\n

Paraguay 89<\/span><\/p>\n

Colombia 84<\/span><\/p>\n

Ecuador 84<\/span><\/p>\n

Guatemala 84<\/span><\/p>\n

Honduras 82<\/span><\/p>\n

Panama 82<\/span><\/p>\n

Venezuela 82<\/span><\/p>\n

Costa Rica 81<\/span><\/p>\n

El Salvador 81<\/span><\/p>\n

Nicaragua 81<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cLowest [10] Positive Experience Index Scores 2014\u201d were:<\/span><\/p>\n

Sudan 47<\/span><\/p>\n

Tunisia 52<\/span><\/p>\n

Bangladesh 54<\/span><\/p>\n

Serbia 54<\/span><\/p>\n

Turkey 54<\/span><\/p>\n

Afghanistan 55<\/span><\/p>\n

Bosnia and Herzegovina 55<\/span><\/p>\n

Georgia 55<\/span><\/p>\n

Lithuania 55<\/span><\/p>\n

Nepal 55<\/span><\/p>\n

There was a far smaller range between highest and lowest positive-experience scores (89\/47), than between highest and lowest negative-emotion scores (56\/12). The entire world ranges positive experiences 89\/47, constituting a range or ratio of 1.9, but the amount of negative experiences ranges 56\/12, or 4.7. It seems that the world is more happy than sad (since people are reporting more positive experiences than negative experiences), but that the sadness is concentrated in countries that have especially suffered wars, plagues, or sustained economic collapse.<\/span><\/p>\n

The extraordinary concentration of positive experiences in Central America is stunning, because the murder-rates there are also high. For example, Honduras has the world\u2019s highest murder-rate<\/span><\/a>, yet it has the fifth-highest positive<\/i>-experiences score. However, the latest year when Honduras\u2019s negative<\/i>-experience score was published, which was in 2014 based on 2013 polling<\/span><\/a>, Honduras ranked 53 out of the 138 polled countries, or had the 53rd-highest negative-experience score. So: negative experiences were fairly high in the world\u2019s murder-capital, but positive experiences were very<\/i> high there. Is the world\u2019s murder-capital a fairly happy place?<\/span><\/p>\n

In Gallup\u2019s report last year<\/span><\/a>, in which 138 countries were surveyed during 2013, the nation with the lowest positive-experience score was Syria. That nation had the all-time lowest score of 36 (obviously, the war with ISIS was likely the main reason for that); Chad was the second-lowest then, at 52. But neither Syria nor Chad was even included in this year\u2019s report (the report that\u2019s based on 2014 data). However, the other lowest-ten nations on the latest-published positive-experience scores were likewise among the lowest-scoring nations last year. The bottom-ten-and top-ten lists look pretty similar, year-to-year. Stability in these scores is rather strong.<\/span><\/p>\n

The United States scored 25th out of 143 on the 2014 positive-experience index (showing on that as being a happy nation there), and 28th out of 138 on the 2013 negative experience index (showing as a happy nation on that too).<\/span><\/p>\n

Russia scored 87th out of 143 on the 2014 positive-experience index (showing as a rather unhappy nation there), and 132nd out of 138 on the 2013 negative-experience index (showing as an extremely happy nation there).<\/span><\/p>\n

China scored 45th out of 143 on the positive, and 123rd out of 138 on the negative.<\/span><\/p>\n

India scored 63rd out of 143 on the positive, and 48th out of 138 on the negative.<\/span><\/p>\n

Regarding Denmark, which is the country that leads most happiness-rankings, they\u2019re 26th out of 143 on the positive, and 114th out of 138 on the negative. (That\u2019s clearly a very happy country, in Gallup\u2019s rating-system.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Sweden is 24th of 143 on the positive, and 108th of 138 on the negative.<\/span><\/p>\n

New Zealand is 21st of 143 on the positive, and 128th of 138 on the negative. (That might be the happiest country on Earth.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Uzbekistan is 32nd of 143 on the positive, and 138th out of 138 on the negative. That negative, of course, was from 2013, when Uzbekistan\u2019s score on the negative was 13; but the latest, the merely partial, report from Gallup (with which the present article started) also showed Uzbekistan as having now the \u201cLowest Negative Experience Index Score\u201d in 2014; it\u2019s only 12. (Maybe Uzbekistan is even happier than New Zealand.)<\/span><\/p>\n

If these surveys from Gallup aren\u2019t just a total mess; if they\u2019re interpretable at all; then Uzbekistan indeed probably is the world\u2019s stand-out happiest nation, being in the top 32\/143 or 22%, for positive experiences, and in the bottom 138\/138 for negative experiences \u2013 the #1 nation for absence<\/i> of negative experiences, or in the top 1% for lacking<\/i> negative experiences. If absence of negative experiences is even more important than presence of positive experiences (and that does seem reasonable), then Uzbekistan is probably the happiness-capital of the world. Maybe everyone should move to Uzbekistan? Has Gallup perhaps identified the best place on Earth to live \u2013 and it\u2019s Uzbekistan<\/span><\/a>? <\/span><\/p>\n

Gallup\u2019s happenstance reporting about these surveys (why didn\u2019t they report the complete scores, and rankings, for positive, and also for negative, at the same time?), and their failure to provide the complete rankings (not only the top-ten and bottom-ten), causes a large percentage of the enormous expense that they\u2019re spent to generate these data, to be simply wasted \u2013 difficult if not impossible to interpret in any really meaningful way. Gallup\u2019s management, at least of their reports if not also of their survey-questions, is clearly poor. But perhaps their polling isn\u2019t quite so bad. In any case, their confusing system of international surveying on welfare (\u201cnegative experience\u201d and \u201cpositive experience\u201d) is a conceptual mess, unclear to interpret, if interpretable at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is Uzbekistan really the best place to live? Anyway, it\u2019s one of the few countries that the U.S. didn\u2019t grab control of, either by outright invasion, or by means of a coup.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013<\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse (The above photo is of Uzbekistan’s mountains.) The\u00a02015 Global Emotions\u00a0survey from Gallup finds that,\u00a0\u201cIraqis Are the Saddest and One of the Angriest Populations in the World.\u201d Iraq also tops the overall “Negative Experience” score. They explain: \u201cIraq\u2019s high Negative Experience Index score is largely attributable to the relatively high percentages of\u00a0Iraqis who report […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":187142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[960,1138,5522,34,38,7327,524,754],"class_list":{"0":"post-187138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"tag-china","9":"tag-greece","10":"tag-guatemala","11":"tag-iran","12":"tag-iraq","13":"tag-polling","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-syria"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}