6 days ago
6
The 2025 World Happiness Report just came out, and I thought it would be interesting to look at the numbers to see how happy Filipinos are.
In 2024, we turned out to be the 58th happiest country, right above South Korea which ranked 59th. In ASEAN we ranked the 4th happiest country, below Singapore (rank 29), Vietnam (43), and Thailand (46).
Interestingly, we’ve grown undeniably happier over time. Since 2006, there’s been a 32% increase in our “life evaluation” or the report’s main measure of happiness. The jump in Filipinos’ happiness was also the biggest in ASEAN from 2012 to 2024.
The results of the World Happiness Report for the Philippines validate previous findings by the Social Weather Stations (SWS). Back in July 1991, when I was about two, only 24% of Filipinos said they were “very happy.” That proportion has nearly doubled to 44% by March 2019.
I think it’s significant that Filipinos have reportedly become happier over time. This is especially in light of reports that the US, while still the most prosperous country, fell to its lowest ranking in the 2025 World Happiness Report (from a peak of 11th place in 2012, the US is now at 24th place).
What factors could explain improving happiness in the Philippines?
The biggest by far would be the extent of “social support” in our society, captured by the question, “If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them, or not?”
Related to this, from 2022 to 2023, we ranked third worldwide in terms of both the quantity and quality of social connections. Less than a tenth of young Filipino adults said they had no close relationships, and more than three-quarters said they could count on a lot of people in their lives for help.
Count ourselves lucky, then, compared to the Japanese and Turkish people, who had the lowest reported levels of social support. In Japan for instance, people tend to mind their own business and don’t like to bother others unless absolutely necessary. In the Philippines, by contrast, we’re rarely by ourselves; at any rate, there’s always someone nearby we can reach out to for help.
The next important factor would be rising incomes, as measured by GDP (gross domestic product) per person. Back in 2000, when I was still in Grade 6, the average Filipino had a yearly income of P90,782. Last year, in 2023, that amount has more than doubled to P197,013.
A higher income allows us to buy the good things in life, like more nutritious food, better clothing, a sturdier residence, and education and healthcare. As Jane Austen wrote in Mansfeld Park, “A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.” Although many studies show that happiness increases with income only up to a point.
The third biggest factor would be the freedom to make life choices, as captured by the question, “Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?”
We’ve had our share of problems in this part of the world, but it’s often easy to take for granted how free we are (compared, for example, to oppressive regimes in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as war-torn areas like Ukraine). We even beat Singapore on this score, even if they’re much more prosperous than us.
Sure, there’s chronic underemployment in the Philippines and we’re stuck with poor-quality jobs with low pay. But in response, millions of Filipinos have chosen to “vote with their feet” and work abroad as overseas Filipino workers. Their remittances — which amounted to $38 billion in 2024, a record high — help stabilize the economy. Filipinos are not totally stuck.
That said, the challenge is how to make sure that the spoils of economic growth are felt by more Filipinos, so that we don’t feel the need to go out of the country just to earn a decent living.
Tellingly, our happiness score has the greatest standard deviation in ASEAN, which suggests a high level of inequality in the level of happiness among Filipinos. We’re becoming happier as a nation, but some parts of our society may not be feeling any happier over time.
What, then, can we do to improve Filipinos’ happiness?
First, we can boost Filipinos’ incomes a lot more. Everyone is looking forward to the country’s upcoming graduation to upper-middle income status. But we need to find ways to reinvigorate the economy which suffered a lot (and continues to reel) from the pandemic’s long-run impacts.
Second, we can do a lot more to improve life expectancy, which contributed very little to our happiness score. We need to beef up health insurance and universal health care, and this is why we need to be concerned with the recent issues surrounding PhilHealth.
Third, we can still improve our generosity score. Doing nice things for strangers improves our happiness, but there was an observed decrease in Filipinos’ “prosocial behavior” from 2005-06 to 2019. To improve on this, we can expand the platforms by which Filipinos can donate, volunteer, help strangers, and engage in other aspects of civic participation.
Fourth and last, we ought to reduce perceptions of corruption, which proxy not just for trust in governance but also a sense of fairness and justice. – Rappler.com
JC Punongbayan, PhD is an assistant professor at the UP School of Economics and the author of False Nostalgia: The Marcos “Golden Age” Myths and How to Debunk Them. In 2024, he received The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) Award for economics. Follow him on Instagram (@jcpunongbayan) and Usapang Econ Podcast.
