The Gallup Global emotions report 2024 (reporting 2023 data) has just been published, and while it is good news for the world, it is a mixed bag for Malta.
The report gathers data by asking people from over 140 countries whether they experienced certain emotions “yesterday”. Worldwide, there has been a positive rebound after COVID as the negative emotions index (composed of data about feeling stress, anger, sadness, worry and pain) lowered (a good thing).
In fact, this is the first time that negative emotions started to swing down since 2014. Stress levels fell almost the world over. Positive emotions (enjoyment, laughing/smiling, learning something new, feeling rested and feeling respected) rose back to pre-pandemic levels.
So, what about Malta? The good news is that there were marginal improvements for Malta of one to two percentage points on many of these indicators. On the negative emotions front, 22% felt anger (in comparison with 24% last year), 24% felt sadness (marginally less than 25% last year), 36% felt pain (37% in 2022) and 63% felt worry (marginally less than the 64% last year). On the positive emotions side, a total of 57% stated they learnt something (more than 55% last year), 60% felt enjoyment (marginally more than the 59% last year) and 77% smiled (in comparison with 75% last year).
The percentage of those who felt respect slipped marginally by one percentage point but remained very high at 91%. In contrast with the 78% who felt well-rested in 2022, 73% felt well-rested in 2023. Again, while this figure slipped, it remains relatively high.
The bad news is that the situation with stress went from bad to worse. In contrast with the 49% of the population who felt stressed in 2022, 55% – more than half the adult population – admitted to having felt stressed the day prior to the interview in 2023.
To put these results in context, we may compare them with those of the other 141 countries in the report. People in Malta are in the top 30% of feeling well-rested. We rank somewhere midway among all countries for the frequency of smiling/laughter, for feeling respected and for having learnt something new. On enjoyment, however, we rank in the bottom 25% of all 142 countries surveyed.
There are only three countries where people worry more than the Maltese- Marie Briguglio
For the negative emotions (where we want to rank as low as possible), Malta ranks mid-way for sadness. It ranks in the top 40% for pain and for anger.
Remarkably, Malta ranks among the top 10 countries for feelings of stress and is the fourth in the world for feelings of worry.
There are only three countries in the measured world where people worry more than the Maltese: Israel, Guinea and Afghanistan. Even in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Palestinian territories and Ukraine people worry less than they do in Malta.
Meanwhile, there are few countries in the world where people experience more stress than Malta, namely Northern Cyprus, Israel, Nigeria, Türkiye, Tanzania, Lebanon, Greece, Egypt, and Sri Lanka. We are more stressed on a day-to-day level than people in Afghanistan, Palestinian territories and Ghana. There are only nine countries where people stress more than Malta.
What is even more interesting is that Malta reports very strong performance on the development front. On the Human Development Index – a statistic that combines life-expectancy, education levels and GDP per capita – Malta’s performance shot up from 0.730 in 1990 to 0.918 by 2021, indicating very high levels of human development.
Yet, Malta, which is densely populated, highly urbanised, highly motorised and terribly noisy – all factors which may contribute to people feeling so stressed, is also a country where people work long hours. Perceptions of corruption could explain some of the worry: Malta scores only 51 on the Corruption Perceptions Index (halfway between Somalia’s 11 and Denmark’s 90).
There is an urgent need to research these persistent (and worrying) levels of stress and worry. The University of Malta, with the Malta Foundation for the Well-being of Society, will continue to investigate this phenomenon with a view to addressing the underlying causes and to promoting policy solutions.
Marie Briguglio is the principal investigator of the Well-being INDEX project www.wellbeingindex.mt.