Happiness Rises Across the UAE

This article is part of an editorial series on Happiness Survey 2019

By David Westley

Updated:

Monday 9 December, 2019

You are the happiest you have ever been - or at least at any time we have undertaken this survey, now in its third iteration after published reports for 2014, and 2018.

It’s not just that you are happier. You are significantly so - in terms of the total number of you claiming to be happy yes, but also in the number of respondents claiming to be “very happy” with their life in the UAE.

We find this a little surprising. 2019 has not been the best year the UAE has had in terms of the economy. It has, for many businesses been challenging with a need to focus on the bottom line, keeping headcount and salaries in check, and protecting cash flow and margin at all costs.

And yet, the number of you claiming to be “Very Happy” has actually spiked, jumping from 21.3% mid-2018 to 30% as we approach the end of 2019. The number of you claiming to be ‘just’ Happy meanwhile has held steady at 58%, leaving 11% of respondents saying they are ‘Not Happy’ and just one percent saying they are Very Unhappy. By contrast last year, 16.86% of respondents said they were unhappy, and 2.68% claimed to be Very Unhappy.

The figures are even better than in 2014, the year following the Expo win.

Last year we described the UAE as brisk and workman like. The exuberance of having won the bid had given way to a more realistic assessment that life was not going to be transformed overnight.

Today we are less than 12 months from the start of Expo, and it would be logical to assume that may be the cause behind the rise in sentiment. The reality, however, is that today you are more measured in your assessment of what the World's fair is going to do for the UAE than you were last year - more here. Something else lies behind the UAE's newfound happiness, and that, we will argue in the following articles, is very simply that the UAE is becoming a nicer, more hospitable, place to live...

Next: Why you choose to live in the UAE