The UAE has been ranked among the top 20 countries in the world in a wellbeing survey conducted by Gallup.
The global wellbeing poll for 2010 revealed a median of 21 percent across 124 countries were “thriving” last year, based on how people rated their lives at the current time and their expectations for the next five years.
The UAE, ranked 16th in the list, had 55 percent of respondents saying they were thriving, with a further 44 percent believing they were struggling with their lives.
The percentage rating their lives well enough to be considered thriving ranged from a high of 72 percent in Denmark to a low of one percent in Chad.
“A median of 20 percent in the Middle East and North Africa region were thriving. Small minorities – one in seven or fewer – were thriving in Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt, and Morocco, which provides some evidence of the underlying discontent that bubbled over in late 2010 and early 2011,” Gallup said.
Elsewhere in the Gulf, Qatar was ranked 18th with 53 percent of thriving respondents and 46 percent of strugglers.
Kuwait’s thriving community made up 46 percent of respondents with 52 percent struggling while Saudi Arabia had 53 percent of strugglers with 43 percent believing their lives were thriving.
Bahrain, which has recently seen political and economic uprisings, was ranked 50th with just 27 percent who considered their lives were thriving and 64 percent in the struggling category. A further nine percent considered they were suffering.
Gallup classifies respondents’ wellbeing as “thriving,” “struggling,” or “suffering,” according to how they rate their current and future lives on a ladder scale with steps numbered from 0 to 10 based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale.
People are considered thriving if they rate their current lives a seven or higher and their lives in five years an eight or higher.
Denmark, along with Sweden (69 percent) and Canada (69 percent), led the list, which was largely dominated by more developed and wealthier nations, as expected given the links between wellbeing and GDP.
In 67 countries, less than 25 percent of people were thriving. Countries on this list hailed from all regions, but thriving was generally lowest in sub-Saharan Africa.
In the Americas, where the median thriving percentage was the highest in the world at 39 percent, thriving ranged from a high of 69% in Canada to a low of two percent in earthquake-ravaged Haiti.
In Europe, while Denmark topped the list, Bulgaria had the lowest percentage of thriving respondents at nine percent.
In Asia Pacific, thriving was higher than 60 percent in Australia and New Zealand and as low as three percent in Tajikistan and Cambodia.
Gallup said global wellbeing improved little between 2009 and 2010, remaining relatively steady.
The polling company added: “As the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt showed earlier this year, leaders should not rely on GDP alone as an indicator of how well their countries and their citizens are doing.
“Monitoring and improving behavioral economic measures of wellbeing are important to helping leaders better the lives of all their residents.”
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