World Happiness Report 2017: Pakistan Tops South Asia

World Happiness Report 2017 ranks Pakistan (score 5.269) at 80, well ahead of the rest of South Asia.

The latest world happiness report released on March 20, 2017 ranks Bhutan (score 5.011) at 97, Nepal (4.962) at 99, Bangladesh (4.608) at 110, Sri Lanka (4.44) at 120, India (4.315) at 122 and Afghanistan (3.794) at 141 among 155 nations surveyed.



Norway (7.537) has the highest score that combines economic, health and polling data compiled by economists that are averaged over three years from 2014 to 2016. Denmark (7.522) ranks second followed by Iceland (7.504), Switzerland (7.494) and Finland (7.469) making the top 5.

Modi Gang Tells Critics to Go to Pakistan 

At the bottom are Sub-Saharan African nations of Tanzania (3.349) at 153, Burundi (2.905) at 154 and Central African Republic (2.693) at 155. War-torn Syria (3.462) is at 152.

World Happiness Report 2017 offers the following rationale for its annual happiness measurement exercise:

"The first World Happiness Report was published in April, 2012, in support of the UN High Level Meeting on happiness and well-being. Since then we have come a long way. Happiness is increasingly considered the proper measure of social progress and the goal of public policy. In June 2016, the OECD committed itself “to redefine the growth narrative to put people’s well-being at the centre of governments’ efforts”.1 In a recent speech, the head of the UN Development Program (UNDP) spoke against what she called the “tyranny of GDP”, arguing that what matters is the quality of growth.“ Paying more attention to happiness should be part of our efforts to achieve both human and sustainable development” she said."

The survey uses Cantril Self-Anchoring Scale, developed by pioneering social researcher Dr. Hadley Cantril, consisting of the following:

1. Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top.

2. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you.

3. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?

4. On which step do you think you will stand about five years from now?

In addition to the answers to Cantril questions, the survey considers the following six variables: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, social freedom, generosity, and absence of corruption.

Here's another excerpt of the latest World Happiness Report:


Here's another excerpt of the World Happiness Report emphasizing social factors influencing happiness:

"A household’s income counts for life satisfaction, but only in a limited way. Other things matter more: community trust, mental and physical health, and the quality of governance and rule of law. Raising incomes can raise happiness, especially in poor societies, but fostering cooperation and community can do even more, especially in rich societies that have a low marginal utility of income. It is no accident that the happiest countries in the world tend to be high-income countries that also have a high degree of social equality, trust, and quality of governance. In recent years, Denmark has been topping the list. And it’s no accident that the U.S. has experienced no rise of life satisfaction for half a century, a period in which inequality has soared, social trust has declined, and the public has lost faith in its government."

Going by regions, European and North American nations are at the top of the list while sub-Saharan African nations are at the bottom. The rest of the world is in the middle.

In addition to median income and wealth, the prevalence of depression is among the key factors determining a country's happiness or the lack of it. The World Happiness Report 2015 noted that Pakistan has made significant efforts in treating rural women's depression. Here's an excerpt from the report:

"Community health workers (Lady Health Workers) were trained to identify and treat maternal depression, using a CBT-based ( intervention (the Thinking Healthy Program). The initiative used 16 home-based individual sessions and included active listening, collaboration with the family, guided discovery and homework (Cognitive Behavioral Therapists) is, trying things out between sessions, practicing what was learned). Forty local areas were assigned to either intervention or routine care, with about 450 mothers in each group. At follow-up sessions (after six months) the experimental group included 23% still depressed, compared with 53% in the control group. In another study, psychoeducation is being offered to all mothers."

Lancet paper describes the mental health intervention as follows:

"Lady Health Workers (LHWs) were trained to deliver a Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) based intervention to depressed women, beginning in the last trimester of pregnancy and ending at 10 months postpartum. The intervention is based in a psychosocial model and not presented as a ‘treatment’ for a ‘mental health problem’ but rather as way to improve positive and healthy thinking around the mother and the baby. The actual delivery of the intervention was integrated into the routine work of the existing community health worker – called Lady Health Worker (LHW) and delivered at the women’s’ home. LHWs are mainly responsible for maternal and child health care".

The Lady Health Workers (LHW) program in Pakistan has been described as “one of the best community-based health systems in the world” by Dr. Donald Thea, a Boston University researcher and one of the authors of a recent Lancet study on child pneumonia treatment in Pakistan. He talked with the New York Times about the study.

Pakistan's relatively lower levels of depression and suicides (less than 3 per 100,000) in South Asia are reflected in the region's suicide statistics. A 2013 scientific paper titled "Mental Depression of Indian Women" published in "Anthropology"  described the situation in India as follows: "Suicidal rate in India is higher comparing to other countries in the world. In each year over a half million people put their own lives down globally, of them 20% are Indians (17% of world population). However, during last two decades the rate of suicide has increased from 7.9 to 10.3 per 100,000".

India's youth suicide rate of 30-40 per 100,000 is among the highest in the world, according to a Lancet study. In addition, Indian farmers' suicides are continuing unabated at a rate of one every 30 minutes for the last two decades.

The problem of suicides appears to be at least in part due to the fact that India's value added agriculture continues be among the lowest in the world. Unlike India, Pakistan managed to significantly raise agriculture productivity and rural incomes in 1980s through a livestock revolution. Economic activity in dairy, meat and poultry sectors now accounts for just over 50% of the nation's total agricultural output. The result is that per capita value added to agriculture in Pakistan is almost twice as much as that in Bangladesh and India.

The key to improving happiness in developing countries like India and Pakistan is to focus on meeting basic needs such as education, nutrition and hygiene, in addition to addressing issues of health, including mental health.




Comments

Riaz Haq said…
Western capitalist view in Forbes: But India's Farmers Should Go Bust, That's How Economic Development Works

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2017/06/11/but-indias-farmers-should-go-bust-thats-how-economic-development-works/#59d5b2ee327e

There are protests, and calls for political action, over the plight of India's farmers at present--and the one important point we've got to get across to people is that India's farmers should be going bust because that's how economic development actually happens. People stop doing low productivity things like rain fed labour intensive agriculture and go off and do more productive things like working in factories or producing services. It's entirely true that we should make the transition as painless as possible, no doubt about that, but we do not want to be preventing the change from happening because that just keeps everyone poorer than they need to be. The harsh truth is that not being able to make a living doing something is the universe's method of telling you you should be doing something else. This is as true of farming as it is of buggy whip manufacture. We are all, the people doing the labour most of all, made richer by people moving from low productivity activities to higher.

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The political reaction to this we understand, of course we do. Some 50% or so of Indians are involved in this low productivity agriculture and they've all got the vote. But that doesn't change the economics here, which is that we'd really very much like people to stop being farmers and go and do something else more productive.


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India has some 50% or so of the population in that agriculture and the output has a value of some 15% or so (rough numbers) of GDP. Both what will mark out India as a rich country, and what will make it one, is when the labour and output profiles of agriculture are similar to those other rich countries. Because that's just what getting richer as a whole means. That the vast majority of the population stops standing around in muddy fields and goes off to do something more productive instead. It's not just that this is what has happened everywhere that has got rich it's that this is the very definition of a place and population getting rich.

Not being able to make a living farming is the universe's way of telling you to do something other than farming. India should smooth the transition, certainly, but not subsidise people to remain farmers.
Riaz Haq said…
#Cow, cow #dung, and #caste: Why #India’s #farmers are fuming at #Modi. Protestors were met with water cannons, tear gas shells, and beaten with lathis at the borders of #Delhi as the Narendra Modi government imposed a curfew. #BJP https://qz.com/india/1411632/ via @qzindia

On Oct. 02, more than 30,000 farmers came knocking at the doors of India’s capital city, New Delhi.

Most of them were from Uttar Pradesh, the politically crucial northern state in India’s Hindi heartland, which hosts the highest number of seats for the national elections next year. The non-violent rally, called by the Bharatiya Kisan Union, began on Sept. 25 from Haridwar, some 200 kilometers north of Delhi and was to end in the national capital on Oct. 02.

But the crowds were met with water cannons and tear gas shells, and were beaten with lathis and batons at the borders of Delhi as the Narendra Modi government imposed a curfew to stop them from entering the city.

However, when the rally refused to disperse, the government relented at midnight and let them in.

The farmers have called off the protest, despite the government not heeding their two main demands—an unconditional loan waiver and the Swaminathan committe-recommended minimum prices for crops.

Quartz spoke with a few of the protesting farmers at Ghaziabad on the outskirts of Delhi, where they’re still camping, to understand what drove them to participate in the seven-day rally and even risk their lives. Most of them are sugarcane cultivators from Uttar Pradesh and belong to the upper-caste Hindu community, a demographic that is perceived as the heart of Narendra Modi’s support base.

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Last month, when Singh left his village to be part of the rally from Haridwar, rains were running havoc on his crops. He has little hope of a good yield this year.

“All they have done is politics in the name of cow, cow dung, and caste,” says the farmer, who had also voted for Modi in 2014.

Now, he is not sure which political party to support. He does not trust assurances the government made to the farmers and wants an unconditional loan waiver, as well as the implementation of minimum prices for food crops as per recommendations of the 2004-06 Swaminathan commission, a demand successive Indian governments have been rejecting.
Riaz Haq said…
#India farmers: Tens of thousands march against #agrarian crisis. Over 300,000 #farmers have killed themselves since 1995. Daughters, wives, family members of those who committed #suicides over crop failure or #debt are also participating in the protest. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-46396118

Tens of thousands of Indian farmers have marched to the parliament in the capital, Delhi, to highlight the deepening agrarian crisis.

They arrived on Thursday from across the country and held a rally demanding better crop prices, drought relief and loan waivers.

Indian agriculture has been blighted by a depleting water table and declining productivity for decades.

This is the fourth such farmers' protest in the past year.

Farmers make up important voting bloc in the country and, analysts say, given the scale of the protests, their discontentment could hurt the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in next year's general election.

"We voted for the BJP but anti-farmer policies of the government have hit us hard," Lakhan Pal Singh, one of the farmers participating in the march, told Reuters news agency.

Protesting India farmers: 'We want what we were promised'
One of their chief demands is a special parliamentary session to discuss solutions to the agrarian crisis, including a full loan waiver and higher crop prices.

Half of India's population works on farms, but farming contributes only 15% to the country's GDP.

In most states, governments have been less than swift in paying the farmers more for their crops - the federal government sets the price for produce and procures crops from farmers to incentivise production and ensure income support.

Indian farmers also struggle with debt owed to banks and money lenders. And crop failures trigger farm suicides with alarming frequency. At least 300,000 farmers have killed themselves since 1995.

Daughters, wives and other family members of farmers who took their own lives over crop failure or mounting debt are also participating in the protest - with some of them carrying photographs of their loved ones.
Riaz Haq said…
#Indian villages lie empty as #drought forces thousands to flee. Wells and handpumps have run dry in the 45C #heatwave.Sick and elderly left to fend for themselves with no end in sight to #water crisis. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/12/indian-villages-lie-empty-as-drought-forces-thousands-to-flee?CMP=share_btn_tw

Hundreds of Indian villages have been evacuated as a historic drought forces families to abandon their homes in search of water.

The country has seen extremely high temperatures in recent weeks. On Monday the capital, Delhi, saw its highest ever June temperature of 48C. In Rajasthan, the city of Churu recently experienced highs of 50.8C, making it the hottest place on the planet.

Further south, less than 250 miles from the country’s commercial capital, Mumbai, village after village lies deserted. Estimates suggest up to 90% of the area’s population has fled, leaving the sick and elderly to fend for themselves in the face of a water crisis that shows no sign of abating.

The village of Hatkarwadi, about 20 miles from Beed in Maharashtra state, is almost completely deserted.

Wells and handpumps have run dry in the 45C heatwave. The drought, which officials say is worse than the 1972 famine that affected 25 million people across the state, began early in December. By the end of May, Hatkarwadi had been deserted with only 10-15 families remaining out of a population of more than 2,000.

With 80% of districts in neighbouring Karnataka and 72% in Maharashtra hit by drought and crop failure, the 8 million farmers in these two states are struggling to survive. More than 6,000 tankers supply water to villages and hamlets in Maharashtra daily, as conflict brews between the two states over common water resources.

The acute water shortage has devastated villagers’ agriculture-based livelihood. Crops have withered and died, leaving livestock starving and with little to drink. Major crops, including maize, soya, cotton, sweet lime, pulses and groundnuts – drivers of the local economy – have suffered.

Around the world, stronger El Niño weather patterns and the ongoing climate breakdown are bringing harsher and more frequent droughts – and already-dry India has been particularly hard hit.

Scientists predict that as temperatures continue to rise with global heating and populations grow, the region will experience harsher water shortages – and will need to find clever solutions to ensure there is enough water for all.

In Marathwada, by many estimates the Indian region most affected by drought, increasingly frequent droughts have led to more than 4,700 farmer suicides in the last five years, including 947 last year. That crisis has deepened. In the city of Beed, clean drinking water has run out and households do not have enough water to wash clothes, clean dishes or flush the toilet. Hospitals are filling up with people suffering from dehydration – and gastrointestinal disease from drinking contaminated water.

Residents who can afford it pay private water tankers the equivalent of £3 for 1,000 litres of water. Many end up in hospital as a result – even cows refuse to drink the muddy and salty liquid that has been dredged from the bottom of exhausted dams and lakes in the region.

“Over the last one-and-half months, there has been a 50% rise in the number of patients suffering from diarrhoea, gastritis etc,” said Sandeep Deshmukh, a doctor at the Beed Civil hospital.
Riaz Haq said…
BISP, Citizenship and Rights Claims in Pakistan


By Rehan Rafay Jamil


https://researchcollective.blogspot.com/2019/03/bisp-citizenship-an...


Taking Stock of Ten Years of the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP)

Over ten years since its establishment, the Benazir Income Support Progamme (BISP) has become Pakistan’s largest social safety net, providing coverage to over 5.6 million women and their households across the country. The expansion of BISP over the past decade marks an important shift in social policy in Pakistan. BISP has now been overseen by three elected governments and has resulted in a significant increase in federal fiscal allocations for social protection. Despite vocal reservations about its name expressed by some political parties, the program remains Pakistan’s largest flagship poverty alleviation program with international recognition.[1]

Third party impact evaluations of BISP have largely focused on its poverty alleviation, nutritional and gender empowerment impacts.[2] [3] These evaluations point to important reductions in poverty and improved nutritional levels for beneficiaries and their households. Oxford Policy Management’s 2016 evaluation finds reductions in BISP households’ reliance on casual labor and an increase in household savings and asset accumulation.[3]

BISP is one of the largest cash transfer programs targeted exclusively at women in the Global South, making the gender impacts of BISP important to understand. In their evaluation, Ambler and De Brauw (2017) find some changes in gender norms and attitudes amongst beneficiaries and their families. Their study finds that female beneficiaries are more likely to have greater mobility to visit friends without their spouse’s permission, are less likely to tolerate domestic violence and male members are more likely to contribute to household work.

BISP and the transition from Cash Transfer Beneficiaries to Citizens

The evaluation reports provide some evidence that BISP has also had a wider set of intended and unintended consequences in influencing beneficiaries’ access to public institutions and spaces. Perhaps the most frequently cited impact of BISP has been a marked increase in rural women’s access to computerized national identity cards (CNICs), a prerequisite for obtaining the program. CNICs can be seen as the first step to citizenship and rights claims in Pakistan. The most significant impact of the rapid increase in CNIC registration amongst BISP beneficiaries has been with regards to voting. Ambler and De Brauw (2017) find evidence that BISP beneficiaries are more likely to vote in national elections. But whether BISP beneficiaries are empowered by the cash transfer to make a wider set of rights claims and access local state services, is less clear.

In order to understand some of the changes brought about by BISP in the lives of rural women, I conducted qualitative field work, including in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with beneficiaries and their spouses, in the district of Thatta in Lower Sindh. Thatta has a high proportion of BISP beneficiaries (47 percent), being a high poverty district. The aim of the fieldwork was to develop an understanding of how beneficiaries and their families perceive of BISP and whether the program has brought about any changes in their engagement with local state services.
Riaz Haq said…
Social Safety Program Amid COVID19 Pandemic:


https://www.cgdev.org/blog/using-what-you-have-scale-payments-covid-response-early-indications-south-asia

India
India is able to reach a high percentage of households through the combination of multiple programs including food rations, pensions, LPG cooking gas subsidies, food-for-work programs, farmer subsidies and making transfers to holders of Aadhaar-linked Jan Dhan accounts. Already, this approach appears to have been able to support quite a high proportion of poor households by scaling up food rations and various financial transfers. Initial survey results suggest that the system has provided material assistance, although some difficulties have been reported in cashing out payments and using the funds to purchase supplies.

In addition to the federal government, many states have announced their own programs to help people who fall through the system, especially migrants. But states face hard budget constraints due to expenditure ceilings imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act. Although the central government has allowed states to borrow up to 50 percent of their yearly credit needs upfront, the current uncertainty may prevent them from significantly expanding the range, scope, and scale of social assistance programs.

Lessons so far: The architecture of direct benefit transfers and JAM facilitates both scale-up and portability of benefits. But it is not possible to get an integrated view across programs which hinders coordination between the central and state-level initiatives. Many people fall through the cracks, especially migrants whose place of current residence does not match their registration location. In crises that disrupt supply chains there is an important role for efficient in-kind systems, but these have to be designed to ensure portability across states.

Pakistan
Building on the platform for BISP, the main social safety net program, Pakistan has announced a major scaleup of financial assistance to people affected by COVID-19. The Ehsaas Emergency Cash program distributes cash to 12 million families whose livelihood is severely impacted by the pandemic or its aftermath. People apply for the benefits through mobile phones. Their claim is assessed, which can include a check against databases, linking records with the national ID number. If they are approved, they can collect their benefit, after biometric authentication, at one of 17,000 cash disbursement centers that have been set up. From its inception in early April, cash has reportedly reached about one quarter of those entitled to the transfer, indicating a significant degree of state capacity to scale up transfers quickly.

Lessons so far: Pakistan is able to use its ID system and mobiles to initiate a large-scale centrally managed transfer program to uniquely identified and verified recipients. Because of the links with the National Socio-Economic Register and several other databases, the government can apply a range of exclusion rules to help target the transfers without making beneficiaries go through time-consuming application and verification procedures. Drawing on its past experience disbursing flood relief in 2007, Pakistan is also using mobile technology to offer recipients a choice of providers, although special payment points are needed because of low financial inclusion. It is not known how easily people are able to purchase supplies with their financial grants.

Bangladesh
Bangladesh has announced a range of programs but has not yet begun to implement them, and faces questions on how it will proceed. Some programs will be able to disburse through mobile money accounts, but many will not. There are also questions about the resilience of the mobile agent network: many agents provide service as a side business while their main income is from small shops, including in markets. They may not find it worthwhile to offer cash-out services if they are not able to open for normal business.
Riaz Haq said…
The World Happiness Report 2023 has been published by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

https://en.dailypakistan.com.pk/20-Mar-2023/where-does-pakistan-stand-in-world-happiness-report-2023

According to the report, Pakistan is at number 103 on the happiness index, climbing 18 spots as compared to the previous list in which the South Asian nation was ranked at 121.

Meanwhile, neighbouring India ranked lowest in Asia as Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka ranked above the second most populated nation.

Some of the parameters used for assessment include the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in terms of Purchasing Power Parity, generosity, people’s perception of corruption and freedom, social support, health and life expectancy at birth.

Report finds that stressful jobs, sheer competition, family issues, health complications, inflation and several other factors cost us our happiness.

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Top Happiest Nations in the world
Finland
Denmark
Iceland
Israel
Netherlands
Sweden
Norway
Switzerland
Luxembourg
New Zealand
Austria
Australia
Canada
Ireland
United States
Germany
Belgium
Czech Republic
United Kingdom
Lithuania
Riaz Haq said…
Standard of Living by Country | Quality of Life by Country 2023


Numbeo Quality of Life

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/standard-of-living-by-country


Finland 178.5

Oman 168.82

Japan 164.06

US 163.6

UK 156.94

UAE 156.94

Morocco 105.04

China 103.16

India 103

Pakistan 102.15

Russia 97.91

Egypt 87.21

Kenya 76.92

Bangladesh 64.54

Iran 63.6

Nigeria 54.71

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