Some days ago, when an invitation came for me to contribute a few hundred words to a prospective Belgian publication, ?The World Book of Happiness,? due to being ?one of the most respected researchers on quality of life in the Philippines,? I assumed it was because of recognition that much of the Philippine survey material in the World Database of Happiness (which is in the Netherlands) is from Social Weather Stations.

I began my response with a one-sentence description of SWS as a source of national statistics. Then, since the two most common survey questions on happiness use either the term ?happy? or the phrase ?satisfaction with life,? I provided the following SWS survey updates:

?As of December 2008, there were 29 percent Very Happy, 48 percent Fairly Happy, 19 percent Not Very Happy, and 4 percent Not At All Happy in the Philippines. In 18 SWS national surveys between 1991 and 2008, the lowest percentage Very or else Fairly Happy was 76. This is at, or slightly above, the average of happiness in other countries.

?As of December 2008, 24 percent of Filipinos were Very Satisfied, 44 percent were Fairly Satisfied, 23 percent were Not Very Satisfied, and 9 percent were Not At All Satisfied with their lives. In 13 SWS national surveys between 2002 and 2008, the lowest percentage Very or else Fairly Satisfied with their lives was 61. Thus most people say they are happy and also that they are satisfied with their lives.?

Since, like the government, SWS considers reduction of poverty and hunger as more meaningful national objectives than increasing personal happiness and satisfaction with life, I added:

?SWS gives more emphasis to poverty and hunger, which it surveys quarterly, compared to happiness and life satisfaction, which it surveys only once or twice a year. As of June 2009, 50 percent of Filipino households rated themselves as Poor, and 20 percent said that they had experienced hunger at least once in the past three months on account of lack of food to eat.

?Poverty and hunger are volatile over time?probably in response to the bursts of inflation to which the country is prone?compared to happiness and satisfaction, which are comparatively stable. Poverty has ranged between over 70 and under 50 percent, while hunger has ranged between 23 percent and 5 percent. Most families that are poor or hungry also say that they are happy, although of course their happiness rate is below that of those who do not suffer from such economic deprivation. In other words, most poor Filipinos are able to find happiness in other aspects of their lives besides their economic conditions.?

When the book?s editor asked if I could say more, and showed samples of other submissions, I realized that I had only answered his request for ?what you have learned through your research on happiness, subjective well-being or related topics,? and had overlooked his request for ?what specific advice you would give to people all over the world to broaden, deepen or improve their happiness.? So I asked for time to think about it.

Now, how could a mere measurer of happiness find out how to make people happier? I think that, in principle, he would have to observe not only the state of happiness, but also other factors accompanying it, so as to identify which factors promote it, and which do not. This is what is done in clinical research.

However, unfortunately for anyone seeking relief from personal unhappiness or personal poverty, the SWS research on these topics is not for the purpose of giving clinical therapy or assistance to an individual. (For that matter, it seems unlikely that any of the institutions supplying happiness figures to the World Database provides therapy to individuals either.)

Our aim is to track progress/regress in the quality of life (not limited to personal happiness but also including poverty, hunger and so forth) of Filipinos in general, and not of individual Filipinos, over time. We base this on interviews of random samples of Filipinos, using a fresh sample in each new survey round, instead of returning to the same people interviewed before.

We publish the time trends, with the help of the mass media, so as to provide scientific feedback from the grassroots to the government, civil society, the business sector, international bodies, people?s organizations and others whose programs and policies share our common objective of improving the quality of life of Filipinos in general over time.

Data gathering organizations do not expect to assist needy people directly. They cannot feed the hungry, or soothe the unhappy, with statistics. What they can do, however, is to efficiently alert pertinent social relief institutions of the extent of these problems.

How could the national government have established an Anti-Hunger Mitigation Program, if it wasn?t conscious of the immense scale of hunger? When would it have recognized the problem at all, given that the National Nutrition Council?s last hunger survey was six years ago? If it were not for the highly publicized quarterly SWS surveys on hunger, would the government have acted at all, before hunger riots broke out? How will the government be guided as to the success or failure of its anti-hunger program, since as of now the next official hunger survey round has not yet been set?

Whether beneficiaries know how statistics better their lot is unimportant to surveyors. Just knowing that they make a difference makes them happy enough.

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Contact SWS: www.sws.org.ph or mahar.mangahas@sws.org.ph.