Pinoys among happiest, most church-going people in website survey

CLARK FREEPORT, Pampanga, Philippines – Filipinos ranked fourth happiest and third among the most church-going people in the world, according to the statistical website nationmaster.com.

Nationmaster.com ranked the Philippines fourth in a “happiness level” survey of 50 countries. The Philippines also placed third in the website’s “church attendance” survey, with 68 percent saying they attended church services one or more times in a week.

Nationmaster.com is hailed by BBC World and New York Times as “a statistician’s dream” and “astounding and easy to use.”

The website appears on top of the list in the Google search for statistics of nations and, as of yesterday, contained 9,854 statistics, 4,118 maps, and 6,345 profiles.

Nationmaster.com, in its website, said it is “a massive central data source and a handy way to graphically compare nations” with a “vast compilation of data from such sources as the CIA World Factbook, United Nations, and Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.”

In its statistics on “happiness level” involving 50 countries, the Philippines landed fourth and tied with the Netherlands with 40 percent of those surveyed declaring they were happy.

Topping the list was Venezuela with 55 percent, followed by Nigeria with 45 percent, while Ireland and Iceland were tied for third with 42 percent.

The website explained that the happiness level survey referred to the “proportion of people who answered the survey question ‘Taking all things together, would you say you are: very happy, quite happy, not very happy, or not at all happy.’”

The happiness level survey indicated that the US ranked next to the Philippines and tied with Australia and Turkey with only 39 percent of respondents saying they were happy.

In its religion statistics, specifically “church attendance” reflecting “percentage of adults surveyed who claimed that they attend church services one or more times a week,” nationmaster.com ranked the Philippines third with 68 percent score in a survey of 53 countries.

At the top of the church attendance list was Nigeria with 89 percent, then Ireland with 84 percent. Next to the Philippines was South Africa with 56 percent, and Poland with 55 percent.

The US landed only in 10th place, together with Belgium, with 44 percent. Spain, the origin of Christianity in the Philippines, was at 25th spot with 25 percent.

The lowest in the rank of churchgoers were Japan with three percent and Russia with only two percent.

While the happiness and religious statistics paint a positive picture of Filipinos, the website also ranks the Philippines ninth in its survey of some 100 countries under the category “most corrupt.”

The website said the survey on corruption was based on “perception of corruption as seen by business people and country analysts.”

The Philippines got a score of 2.5 (with 0 being “highly corrupt”), tied with Guatemala, Uganda, Libya, Ecuador, Afghanistan, Bolivia, Guyana and Nepal.

Topping the list of most corrupt countries were Bangladesh and Chad which both got 1.7 score and Burma, Haiti, and Turkmenistan with 1.8.

Nationmaster.com also cited the Philippines as the 37th country to have the most number of cellphone ownership at 17.7 per 100 people. Topping the list in this category were Taiwan with 106.4 cellphones per 100 people, Luxembourg with 101.3, Hong Kong with 92.9, Italy with 92.6 and Iceland, 90.28. –Ding Cervantes, Philippine Star