Thread: Central Americans More Satisfied with Life

Increasing Number of People in Central America Say Their Lives are Thriving




Sintia Radu

,U.S.News & World Report•November 3, 2017

A person scanning the news headlines that come out of Central America could be forgiven for coming away with negative views of the region. Stories about corruption in daily life, refugees and crime -- including drug and human trafficking -- dominate international news media coverage.

A recently released report, however, challenges such negative themes. People from three Central American countries say satisfaction from their lives has improved dramatically during the past 10 years, according to a report from Gallup, the Washington, D.C.-based global polling firm.

The results are not surprising, say the experts at Gallup, as people's perception of their own reality can be very different from the country's performance or what the outside world believes is true.
"Sometimes what you read is not an accurate reflection of the reality and I believe a true reflection of reality is how people report on their own lives because how they feel is a fact," says Jon Clifton, managing partner at Gallup.


Additionally, the value of measuring such public perceptions is that they can be a guide for future positive change, Clifton says.
People in El Salvador reported the highest increase in satisfaction in the past decade, according to the report from Gallup. The survey showed that 44 percent of citizens in El Salvador, a country known for its high crime rate and which reported a 40 percent poverty rate 10 years ago, say today that their lives are going well, an increase of 27 percentage points from rates reported by Gallup in 2007.
Nicaraguans reported the same happiness levels as Salvadorans, despite being the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with around 40 percent of its people living in poverty. The 44 percent who report they are thriving in their daily lives is an increase of 26 percentage points from 2007.


Last, but not least, Honduras reports 37 percent of its people say they believe they are thriving. Such a figure represents an 18 percentage point jump from 2007 and may come as a surprise for a country that not long ago ranked as the most dangerous nation in the world. Honduras reported a murder rate of 86.5 per 100,000 people in 2011, according to the National Violence Observatory, a research institution based out of the Honduras National Public University.

The findings from Gallup are part of a larger set of results from 115 countries that examined the satisfaction levels people reported in their daily lives. The research has been conducted since 2007 and uses "thriving" as an indicator for people's lives. Questions in the survey focused on how people perceived their lives. For example, one of them asked whether people felt safe walking alone at night
as part of data collected to rank safety in a country.

Research shows that how people report on their lives is a powerful indicator that can better predict major events when traditional economic indicators, such as gross domestic product, or GDP, show a different picture.
"GDP per capita was rising in a perfectly linear fashion in Egypt five years leading up to Arab Spring, so traditional economic indicators were saying things were OK," Clifton says. "When we asked people about their lives, they told us the opposite story. The same was true in Brexit."

Research of this kind, known as behavioral economics, won aNobel prize this year for its practitioners, and relies on the idea that around 70 percent of people's actions are emotional. Thus, in order to better understand them or analyze their lifestyle, scientists need to look beyond traditional statistics, such as unemployment, GDP, or household income.

Why people in Central America report such high thriving levels is anyone's guess, yet experts say this might have to do with an improved accountability of politicians that have struggled to crack down on violent street gangs and prove that they can better respond to citizen demands.

"People perceive that they are in greater control of their destiny, that despite all of the challenges that they are facing, they know they can elect leaders," says Ricardo Raul Salazar Rey, a professor of Latin American history from Guatemala who now teaches at the University of Connecticut. "And even if people they elect are sometimes not as good as what we'd want them to be, there is a sense that when they don't perform you can kick them out and can vote differently."

Taking into account how people perceive their lives brings valuable information to policymakers around the world, who should be more concerned about making people's lives better instead of analyzing traditional indicators that only show a country's economic performance, experts say.

Such results in Central America are valuable as they can bring about more positive change, but also present more challenges because the expectations people now have from their countries are much higher.
"Leaders in these Central American countries where there is positive momentum will need to keep it up," Clifton says.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/increasin...174156310.html

Proves how false the narrative of "fleeing violence" "fear" is to enter into USA, then be escorted to some sort of relative, illegal or not, and get $1500month and healthcare/schoolng, then take a job away from our citizens. There are no background checks on them - murderer, rapist, gang member, child molester come right in with all your strains of diseases and invasive larvae.

gw reauthorized that we must take central american youths in and obama gave them the monies and used our border patrol to escort them @ the country - they get a smart phone too. Overdue time for them to return to their countries.

Exactly, artist. Our members of Congress are pretty much uninformed illiterate fools. Disgusting.

It is more part of the plan to fill the USA with uneducated consumers sans understanding the English language so big business will have more consumers and more dummies to pollute their way into mega profits along with CHEAP labor.

Yeah, you're absolutely right, the whole thing has been a giant plot to destroy our country. I just didn't want to go there today, such a nice day here, and the reality of what they've done is so disgusting and epressing.