Editorial | Are Jamaicans a happy people?

Well … maybe. And it depends whom you compare them with, and how you define happiness.

Using the yardstick of the World Happiness Report 2026, Jamaicans are the 49th happiest people in the world, from among 149 countries surveyed in 2025. Though, according to this index, Jamaica might not be among the world’s happiest countries, but it is also not among the lowest.

But this is not a measure of how often people laugh, the number of wisecracks they make or how hard or often they party. Nor is it a popularity contest.

That Jamaicans are very helpful people, and the country ranks somewhere in the mid-regions of being one of the happiest nations in the world, is both heartening and good news, especially in the turmoil-ridden world we are living in.

But, how does happiness matter, in the grand scheme of things?

The World Happiness Report is a composite of data from surveys by the Gallup polling organisation in six categories:

• a country’s per capita GDP;

• the social support people enjoy;

• their healthy life expectancy;

• their freedom to make life choices;

• the generosity of the general population;

• and perceptions of internal and external corruption levels.

Jamaica’s performance on the index has fluctuated in recent years, slipping from 37th in 2021 to the close to 50s now. This decline suggests a weakening of the factors that shape the index’s notion of happiness, or people’s perception thereof. The current ranking, though, is a significant jump from its 73rd ranking in 2025 .

SHAPE ‘HAPPINESS’

In that sense, happiness equates to how people judge the quality of their lives based on these parameters. Which also give governments an opportunity to shape the ‘happiness’ of citizens by advancing policies that improve their well-being.

The upshot is that, on the basis of the latest findings, Jamaicans in 2025 felt more secure and optimistic than in the past. But, slippage apart, there are silver linings, especially for a country where there are often complaints of a general coarsening of the society, deteriorating social mores, and calls for campaigns to improve values and attitudes. Indeed, only last week, Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness lamented these perceived shortcomings recently, speaking in the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Deliverance Evangelistic Association.

Said Dr Holness, “Every single day, it is assaulted viciously, sometimes to the point where you say, maybe this is the new norm … [but] it doesn’t have to be that way. While we don’t try to fight progressive change, we have to be so careful that the deterioration of our values doesn’t make us crass.”

Yet, in Gallup’s World Happiness Report 2025, ranked Jamaica as number one in the world for its people being the most likely to help a stranger. Based on data from 2022–2024, the report highlighted high levels of interpersonal kindness among Jamaicans, which suggests that the ability to trust, to be kind and to establish human connection hasn’t been totally lost, despite other studies that consistently brand Jamaica as a country with low levels of trust in public institutions. Surveys from different sources report that the vast majority of Jamaicans (over 70 per cent) continue to perceive a high level of corruption among public officials.

PUBLIC SAFETY NET

If Jamaica has to holistically develop, it is imperative to:

– strengthen public safety net (it is currently ranked 10th on list of countries with the highest crime rates in the world);

– reduce cost of living pressures; and

– ensure that the institutions of the State work in the interest of citizens and are seen to do so.

Indeed, when people believe that institutions are fair and effective, their overall assessment of lives improves even if income levels remain modest. Further, the Gallup study shows that healthy life expectancy and social support are among the strongest drivers of happiness.

The happiness rankings should, by no measure, be taken as an unimpeachable arbiter of the country’s happiness or sense of well-being. What, though, is notable is the strong coincidence between the findings in this index of what drives people’s sense of well-being, or the lack thereof, and those of other reports.

Jamaica’s position near the middle of the global happiness table means the country is neither failing, nor succeeding. It is at a point where policy decisions can still make a measurable difference.