GfK Ukraine has studied to what extent Ukrainians feel happy and pleased with life in comparison with Europeans and Russians by conducting a survey named Roper Reports®Worldwide Country Overview: Ukraine 2009. The results are interesting because what they show is not how well the respondents feel when they are being polled (the first six months of 2009) but how each individual generally rates the life they have lived – the sum of assessments by certain criteria – and the prospects of it. In other words, each evaluated themselves in this way. Obviously, nobody wants to call themselves a loser or to admit that their life was (or is) a failure. Experts claim that it is perhaps for this reason that, in the heat of an economic crisis, most Ukrainians (62 percent) say, albeit grudgingly, that they are happy. Analysts say it is in fact a European result because, according to GfK Ukraine, 63 percent of European Union residents and 60 percent of Russians also claim they are satisfied. Incidentally, it is Brazilians who seem to be the happiest – 88 percent of Brazil’s citizens asserted this.
Interestingly, the number of Ukrainians who feel happy is on the rise with every passing year. For example, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KMIS) conducted a similar survey in Ukraine last year. Asked if they consider themselves happy, 57 percent of those polled answered in the affirmative, whereas in 2001 only 38 percent did so. The rise of this figure can be partially explained by the age of the people who more often than not say they are happy: the GfK Ukraine poll shows that 65 percent of the young people aged 15 to 19 are satisfied with their life and 76 percent are happy. KMIS experts have obtained more or less similar results: KMIS research associate Yulia Sakhno told The Day that such factors as age and health have a greater effect on the feeling of happiness in Ukrainians than material wellbeing. Still, according to the GfK Ukraine survey, although we are above all dissatisfied with our financial situation and health, we complain more than the other countries’ citizens about our social life and relations with children.
At the other end of the “happiness rating” are the over-60s: only one third of them are satisfied with their life and only half of them consider themselves happy. The situation is clear because other surveys show that old-age pensioners have the highest level of depression in addition to poor health and inadequate social security. Besides, most of our old-age pensioners are women who remain alone in the twilight of their life (they outlive men by an average 12 years).
There is a totally different picture in the European Union: its pensioners radically differ from their Ukrainian and Russian peers; they feel more satisfied and happy with age because they have managed to save money and can now focus on themselves and their grandchildren, travel around the world, or do all of these things.
The conclusion is that Europeans have the “right” old age: in the Oriental philosophy (after all, Christianity does not deny this, either), an individual is supposed to gain more wisdom and harmony with age, which, accordingly, makes the individual happy.
But it is, naturally, difficult to achieve this if the individual has not saved funds. Having studied the living standards of pensioners in Ukraine, Europe, and Russia, experts have concluded that in Europe the elderly are far richer than the young, whereas most of their Ukrainian and Russian peers have not accumulated savings and failed to adapt to new economic and social conditions. So experts conclude that the older generation in Ukraine and Russia is the poorest, most underprivileged and unhappy stratum of society.
Another interesting point is to what extent Ukrainians are satisfied with their family relations. While it is more or less OK with children (69 percent of the respondents say they have no problems with their children), there is a more difficult situation with marital relations. For example, only 61 percent of Ukrainians are satisfied with their marital relationships. It is no secret that one of the factors that make people and families unhappy is alcoholism. This problem becomes more and more acute in Ukraine with every passing year because, due to a shortsighted governmental policy and ubiquitous alcohol adverts, young men are standing a good chance to become alcoholics even before they are 20. According to Stanislav Kostiuchenko, a consulting doctor at the Ukrainian Association of Psychiatrists, 35 to 45 years is a critical age for Ukrainian male citizens, when they already have families, children and even work – it is at this time that our men usually drink themselves away. On the contrary, there are practically no tendencies like this in the EU and the US: psychiatrists say that if a man in those countries has a job and children, this encourages him to live a decent life and care for the future of himself and his children.
It is perhaps for this reason that young unmarried women in Ukraine feel happier than young unmarried men (65 and 50 percent, respectively), but, as surveys show, they become more unhappy in marriage. Only 46 percent of young married women consider themselves happy (against 54 percent of men). It is about childless families. But there may be happiness in the families that raise posterity: 63 percent of the women who have children become happy again. However, daddies do not exactly seem endeared over this: only 53 percent of the men who have children feel happy.
One more observation: as most Ukrainians find it difficult, due to the financial squeeze, to strike up a new acquaintance (with people or the world), they find solace in friends and relatives. 84 percent of Ukrainians – against 68 percent in the EU and 37 percent in Russia – say they are satisfied with this kind of communication. Psychologists say it is a good thing because it shows close ties among people, when Ukrainians, especially those living in small towns and villages, are still adhering to the unwritten laws of coexistence, which means one must help another, come to their rescue in times of trouble, and “warm” their heart.
And what caused no surprise are the factors that mostly poison our existence and make us unhappy. It is the level of financial security, not politics. Yet, as far as this country is concerned, quite a few people – 25 percent – said they are satisfied with this level. On the contrary, 43 percent of EU citizens and 32 percent of Russians say they have enough money for a decent life and are happy with their financial situation.
Naturally, every nation may have its own reasons to say it is happy, which requires a thorough analysis. For while it is more or less clear about Ukrainians, how can one explain the fact that, according to a similar survey, the word’s lowest level of dissatisfaction with life is in South Korea and, of all places, Japan?
