Vietnam Happier than US?
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From: Fox, Diane <dnfox@holycross.edu>
Date: Sun, Jun 30, 2013 at 5:08 PM
To: "Group, Vietnam Studies" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Perhaps you have seen the feature in Time this week on happiness, which notes that on the World Happiness Report, published by the Earth Institute of Columbia University, the US ranks 23rd out of 50 countries, trailing, among others, Viet Nam.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
Diane
--
Diane Fox
Senior Lecturer in Anthropology
College of the Holy Cross
1 College Street
Worcester, Ma 01610
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From: David Brown <nworbd@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Jun 30, 2013 at 6:09 PM
To: "Fox, Diane" <dnfox@holycross.edu>
Cc: "Group, Vietnam Studies" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
It's an entirely subjective poll. Vietnam ranks near the top every year -- whether because Vietnamese are fundamentally more optimistic, or disposed to tell an interviewer what they think he wants to hear, or both, or neither, I just can't decide.
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From: Vu Thi Quynh Giao <vtq.giao@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Jun 30, 2013 at 6:54 PM
To: "Group, Vietnam Studies" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Of course it's subjective because in the scientific world, people have a nice name for 'happiness', i.e. Subjective Well Being.
Now drinking coffee in Saigon, I can't help feeling that this is such a youthful, cheerful and wonderful nation. Does the fact that Vietnam has a crazily young population affect the survey that Diane mentioned? How about Vietnam's internet penetration rate of over 30%? Young and wired - these are the Vietnamese that were most likely to take part in the report.
Whenever I come to the IDECAF Theater, either on Le Thanh Ton street or Tran Cao Van street, HCMC, I always feel Vietnam is in a bizarre time. One moment it is in tears and right after that it is in cheers. The comedies I've seen usually communicate the idea of inequality, capitalism, urbanization and boat people in cute ways. So in summary I believe the World Happiness Report is right. Vietnam is happy but not in a traditional sense of the word. People beat each other to get ahead and to survive the marriage of capitalism and socialism, then we make fun of each other, get back on our feet, laugh and call it happiness.
Sorry about my morning ramblings. To make up for it, I'd love to invite any VSG member in HCMC to the IDECAF Theater. I'm a typical Vietnamese belonging to the proletariat, but I can afford to buy happiness tickets.
Happily yours,
Giao.
Vu Thi Quynh Giao - HCMC.
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From: Benedict Kerkvliet <ben.kerkvliet@anu.edu.au>
Date: Sun, Jun 30, 2013 at 7:07 PM
To: Vu Thi Quynh Giao <vtq.giao@gmail.com>, Group Vietnam Studies <vsg@u.washington.edu>
What a lovely set of "morning ramblings"! Thank you, Giao.
Ben K
--
Ben Kerkvliet
Emeritus Professor
The Australian National University
Canberra, A.C.T. AUSTRALIA
and
Affiliate Graduate Faculty member
University of Hawai'i
Honolulu, Hawaii 96822
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From: dan hoang <hoangdanlieu@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 3:14 AM
To: Benedict Kerkvliet <ben.kerkvliet@anu.edu.au>, Vu Thi Quynh Giao <vtq.giao@gmail.com>, Group Vietnam Studies <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I wonder who among Vietnamese people took part in the survey?
And how do people define happiness?
Lieu
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From: Huong Pham Quynh <opqhuong@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 3:14 AM
To: Benedict Kerkvliet <ben.kerkvliet@anu.edu.au>, Vu Thi Quynh Giao <vtq.giao@gmail.com>, Group Vietnam Studies <vsg@u.washington.edu>
As a sociologist I see reliability and validity of the survey about the World Happiness Report is quite low. Sorry, I know the Earth Institute of Columbia University, the US is at righ rangking, but it seems to me that the survey is more for fun but not science. If you see in detail of the survey processing, such as hapiness measuring, questionnaires, the meaning of questions in Vietnam; sampling, sample size, and also capacity of interviewers, ect. I don’t think you can say that it’s significant results.
====================
Ms. Pham Quynh Huong
Vietnam Academy for Social Sciences (VASS)
Institute of Sociology (IOS)
Department of Urban Sociology (DUS)
#1, Lieu Giai Str.
Hanoi, Vietnam
Tel: 84 4 6273 0465 (off) 84 4 3784 0473 (home)
Mobile phone: 0904125698
Fax: 84 4 39784631
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From: Thomas Jandl <thjandl@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 3:42 AM
To: Benedict Kerkvliet <ben.kerkvliet@anu.edu.au>, Vu Thi Quynh Giao <vtq.giao@gmail.com>, Group Vietnam Studies <vsg@u.washington.edu>, Huong Pham Quynh <opqhuong@yahoo.com>
I don't know about this survey, but I believe it is Singapore National University that has been doing one regularly about Asian countries only. I never read the whole thing, but there is great consistency of the results. Vietnam always comes out on or very near the top. (Singapore itself always does badly.)
Perfectly non-scientifically, I'd say that merely from a perception point of view, I am willing to believe that the Vietnamese are pretty content. Having conversations is not a methodology, for sure, but I always felt that Vietnamese are less gloomy and more positive about their lives than people in many other places I lived or worked.
And when I tell Vietnamese of all walks of life about the results of the Singapore survey, they believe it as enthusiastically as Singaporeans agree with their own bad ranking.
_________________________________
Thomas Jandl, Ph.D.
School of International Service
American University
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From: Ðinh Lu Giang <lugiangdinh@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 5:00 AM
To: Thomas Jandl <thjandl@yahoo.com>
Cc: Group Vietnam Studies <vsg@u.washington.edu>, Benedict Kerkvliet <ben.kerkvliet@anu.edu.au>
Hello
Using the same questions/conversations/criteria/measurement for asking about happiness/life satisfactions of the peoples from different cultures, values, traditions cannot avoid doubts and inaccuracy. So obviously, the report needs to be much more deeper to be used in scientific researches. I do not know the life in the US, but as a Vietnamese, I can understand the high ranking of Vietnam in the report. It is simply because most of Vietnamese live in a quite difficult life conditions (especially those in the countryside) and with little improvement of the conditions, they can feel much happier: they feel extremely happier one day they can afford an air-conditioner and turn it on in hot sumer nights; a quite place to enjoy a fresh beer is for many a great gift of a hard working day etc. Also, in comparison with some of the countries I have opportunities to live for quite a time, there is not much stress in Vietnam. Life is slow and not much stressful there.
I think one of the ways to measure (not scientifically of course) is to observe how much Vietnamese and other peoples laugh. Vietnamese people (still) laugh a lot.
My humble opinion.
Dinh Lu Giang
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
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From: Anh-Minh Do <caligarn@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 6:15 AM
To: Ðinh Lu Giang <lugiangdinh@gmail.com>
Cc: Group Vietnam Studies <vsg@u.washington.edu>, Benedict Kerkvliet <ben.kerkvliet@anu.edu.au>
Dear all,
Sociocultural observations and subjective accounts aside, I won't believe any of these happiness surveys until two things come into play: 1) scientists come to a unified definition of what happiness is and 2) neuroscience is involved. But...
1) It's going to be a long time before we come to a definitive definition of what happiness is. It's one of the most diversely defined words out there.
2) Neuroscience still has a ways to go in measuring happiness level because of reason 1 and because the tools to measure are just not cheap enough yet.
So let's not jump to any conclusions yet. It's nice that Vietnam keeps topping these vague surveys but let's not tout it around like it's accurate or exact by any means.
For what it's worth,
Minh
Cheers,
Minh
----
Anh-Minh Do
Editor at Tech In Asia
Chief Master of Ceremonies at evecoo
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From: dan hoang <hoangdanlieu@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 8:05 AM
To: Anh-Minh Do <caligarn@gmail.com>, Ðinh Lu Giang <lugiangdinh@gmail.com>
Cc: Group Vietnam Studies <vsg@u.washington.edu>, Benedict Kerkvliet <ben.kerkvliet@anu.edu.au>
Dear list,
Thanks to anh Mark (Ashwill) I can have a glance to the report on the world happiness. I found the below approaches that are used to measure happiness and from my personal view, with their approaches, I think what they have gained from the survey & interview to conduct this report are correct. However, the correctness cannot be absolute because the objective side of the happiness. When one is not happy with their society, whether s/he can be happy with their own life and opposite? It is difficult to say who is happier than who according to their demands of spriritual & material life. For some countries, what most people concern is their working and living environments - if the survey & interview has been taken on these aspects the results maybe different from country to country. And then the happiness maybe not the same ... The questions to reveal the true happiness of a person or of a country are not so easy to be asked!
A generation of studies by psychologists, economists, pollsters, sociologists, and others has shown that happiness, though indeed a subjective experience, can be objectively measured, assessed, correlated with observable brain functions, and related to the characteristics of an individual and the society. Asking people whether they are happy, or satisfied with their lives, offers important information about the society. It can signal underlying crises or hidden strengths. It can suggest the need for change.
They report on the two broad measurements of happiness: the ups and downs of daily emotions, and an individual’s overall evaluation of life. The former is sometimes called “affective happiness,” and the latter “evaluative happiness.”
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From: Thomas Jandl <thjandl@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 8:55 AM
To: Anh-Minh Do <caligarn@gmail.com>, Ðinh Lu Giang <lugiangdinh@gmail.com>, dan hoang <hoangdanlieu@yahoo.com>
Cc: Group Vietnam Studies <vsg@u.washington.edu>, Benedict Kerkvliet <ben.kerkvliet@anu.edu.au>
I don't mean go argue that happiness is and remains subjective to a large degree. But the discussion reminds me of the triage unit in emergency care. The triage nurse there asks emergencies -- if they are able to talk -- what their level of pain is from 1-10.
Now that sounds like a horrible way of getting an actionable response. Yet the best hospitals insist it works fine. People may not be ale to compare their pain to the pain of others, but they give a pretty good picture about the current pain in comparison to other pain they have experienced. And in sum, that tells the triage nurse how urgent the situation is. And its seems to work across cultures (with cultural attitudes to complaining being different), genders etc.
Maybe, happiness is not so different. "How happy are you on a scale from 1-10?" sounds like a horribly subjective and useless question, but when asked often enough of enough people, it may tell us something after all.
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 9:23 AM
To: Thomas Jandl <thjandl@yahoo.com>
Cc: Group Vietnam Studies <vsg@u.washington.edu>, Benedict Kerkvliet <ben.kerkvliet@anu.edu.au>
Doesn't the answer depend on timing as well as factors already mentioned? If you were to ask people in Phoenix, AZ, where the temperature today is around 130F if they're happy, the answer might be very different than when the temperature is not quite so high. Similarly, asking folks in Hoi An in the middle of a typhoon might elicit different answers than from 20-something sipping iced coffee in a HCMC cafe.
From a purely anecdotal perspective, when I was in Hanoi last January, I encountered far more anxiety than a few years earlier when the economy was booming and fewer corruption stories were making headlines, when tensions with China were not as high, and bloggers did not feel as threatened as they seem to be now.
Even apolitical people are anxious: about climate change, about inflation, about the sorry state of education. It's pervasive.
Hue Tam Ho Tai
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From: Brian Moore <brianmooreffl@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 9:26 AM
To: Group Vietnam Studies <vsg@u.washington.edu>
OK, here's my 2 cents.
Since I did not see the original survey, I can only say that I agree with others who cautioned the meaning of "happiness" because it makes all the difference in how the questions were answered. There are many VNmese translations for the word "happiness" - sung suong, hanh phuc (marital happiness or bliss), vui suong, or vui long (contentment).
I also think that the answers were also different if those taking the survey were poor. If I sold lottery tickets for a living, I would not say I am happy or even content. If I only made enough to live on, sure, I would say I am content. But sung suong? No.
Stepping down from the soapbox....
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From: Ben Stocking <benstocking@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 11:28 AM
To: Brian Moore <brianmooreffl@yahoo.com>
Cc: Group Vietnam Studies <vsg@u.washington.edu>
As a generalized indicator of optimism, I think the "happiness" survey is probably accurate. In my last year as Hanoi bureau chief for the Associated Press, we commissioned a survey of Vietnamese attitudes 35 years after the war. It was conducted by GFK, a highly reputable polling firm that regularly partners with the AP. GFK used a scientific sampling from all three regions of Vietnam -- North, South and Central. It found that 81 percent felt the country was on the right track. (The number of Americans who felt their country was on the right track, then and now, was about 30 percent, according to Rasmussen.)
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/04/28/ap-gfk-poll-vietnamese-upbeat-future/
Granted, the years since the GFK poll have not been good ones for Vietnam's economy. But in the grand scheme of things, it only makes sense that Vietnamese would be more optimistic than Americans. Since the early 1990s, the poverty rate in Vietnam has fallen from about 60 percent to 20 percent, according to the World Bank. Meanwhile, wages in the United States have stagnated and fallen to a record low as a percentage of GDP, according to the New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/sunday-review/americas-productivity-climbs-but-wages-stagnate.html
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From: dan hoang <hoangdanlieu@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 7:43 PM
To: Ben Stocking <benstocking@gmail.com>, Brian Moore <brianmooreffl@yahoo.com>
Cc: Group Vietnam Studies <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear list,
I feel interesting to know what make a person or a nation be optimic? Their expectations to & the standards they set up for the life? High and low? The higher you are expected the lesser you are optimic when what you are expected cannot be achieved or achieved less than expected.
If unsatisfaction to the life is a motor for the development?
But, in overall, and from what I have observed in different cultures, I think high material demands destroy spriritual happiness; but spiritual happiness cannot be fullfilled when the minimum material life or basic needs have not been met. The balance of meterial and spiritual needs is needed, but how? to bring people happiness? Who is in charge for this balance? Can individual be able to balance these needs him/herself? What are the roles of the Gorvernment? What lead people to the high material or spiritual needs? What are spiritual needs for a person or a nation? Who will be happier? people in a country with high corruption, less transparency, less freedom in speech or people in a country with more freedom, more transparency and less corruption?
Lieu
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From: Andrew Wells-Dang <andrewwd@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 11:17 PM
To: Group Vietnam Studies <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear list,
Some recent research on farmers' satisfaction and inequality gives a different angle on the happiness question (see below).
But on a tangent in response to an earlier post, I can attest that people during a typhoon in Hoi An are still pretty calm, compared say to motorbike drivers in big-city traffic!
Andrew Wells-Dang
Oxfam
42 percent of farmers unhappy with life
VietNamNet Bridge – Up to 42% of farmers insist that they are dissatisfied with their current living conditions, according to a household resource survey on Vietnamese rural areas and farmers.
The report just released by the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development (Ipsard) points out that one of the reasons for such dissatisfaction is that farmers’ incomes are not proportional to their labor.
The survey, conducted bi-annually since 2006, examines the lives of 3,000 farming households in 12 provinces nationwide.
Nguyen Do Anh Tuan, head of Ipsard’s Center for Agricultural Policy, said incomes, spending and agricultural production efficiency has improved but not equally. There have been improvements seen in Ha Tay, Long An and Lam Dong provinces but not in Lao Cai Province.
Land accumulation takes place slowly, with many households owning only 0.7 hectare and others in mountainous areas owning land sites which are located 10-15 kilometers apart.
Meanwhile, due to high risks, it is not easy for farming households to expand agricultural production. Besides, wages from the informal sector are unstable.
According to the report, savings of farming households are very low with only VND5-8 million per household per year, accounting for 10-15% of their incomes. The main reason for this is that households are too poor to save.
Most of their savings (80%) are kept in the form of gold or cash and used in case of natural disasters, diseases, illness and old age. Meanwhile, only 15% of savings is used with investment purposes.
In addition to low incomes and accumulation, the report shows that up to half of farming households suffer from collective crises such as natural disasters, diseases and unstable prices, or personal crises such as death, illness, loss-making business and land recall.
Natural disasters such as storms happen more often with greater severity; input prices increase; farm produce, livestock and seafood products cannot be sold or are sold at low prices.
Although the picture in the report is relatively gloomy, economic expert Pham Chi Lan believes that the life picture of rural households is even gloomier.
However, the report contains specific data with important messages. The Government’s direct supporting policies have not helped the people that much and they still have to rely on assistance of the community, their own efforts and other channels.
Dang Kim Son, director of Ipsard, said that the Government has provided many policies to support agriculture and farmers, but such policies are not strong or suitable.
Moreover, there are still many economic development opportunities which have not been exploited, he added.
“Based on this report, Ipsard will study and propose new policies to have new development plans, especially amid the current economic restructuring.
Source: SGT
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From: Thomas Jandl <thjandl@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 7:45 AM
To: Ben Stocking <benstocking@gmail.com>, Brian Moore <brianmooreffl@yahoo.com>, dan hoang <hoangdanlieu@yahoo.com>
Cc: Group Vietnam Studies <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I am getting the impression that much of the disbelief in the Vietnam happiness report is based on the rejection of the belief that a country run by the Communist Party can be happy. The post below references "transparency" and "freedom of speech."
I don't think that most people in Vietnam are too deeply concerned with single-party rule or transparency. These are concerns of a certain social stratum. In the US, we have these things, yet people are rabidly dissatisfied with politics, Congress, the President and what not.
Politics is probably a part of overall happiness, especially if you live in Assad's Syria and get tortured for spraying a graffiti. But in Vietnam, oppression is much more subtle and hits a small segment of the population. As Andrew Wells-Dang has pointed out in a recent talk, even people in the politics sphere feel that life is getting better and political space wider.
So I would suggest that one should not link dissatisfaction with the lack of Western-style democracy on the part of some (of course represented n this forum) with the happiness of the average Vietnamese.
_________________________________
Thomas Jandl, Ph.D.
School of International Service
American University
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From: Ben Stocking <benstocking@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 8:14 AM
To: Thomas Jandl <thjandl@yahoo.com>
Cc: Group Vietnam Studies <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I would agree on all counts, Thomas.
In fact, despite Vietnam's miserable record of persecuting dissidents, for most ordinary Vietnamese, day to day freedoms have increased over the last couple decades. Meanwhile, here in post-9/11 America, government intrusions on privacy have been growing. Abuses of civil liberties have been on the rise.
As for the farmers, Andrew, if 42 percent are unhappy, does that mean 58 percent were happy? Given the back-breaking nature of farming in Vietnam, not to mention the miserable pay, I'd say 58 percent seems pretty high. If we surveyed migrant farmworkers in the United States, I wonder how many would say they are happy.
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 8:21 AM
To: Thomas Jandl <thjandl@yahoo.com>
Cc: Group Vietnam Studies <vsg@u.washington.edu>
It does seem to me that what answers one may receive to a particular question depends on when and whom one asks. People in the middle of a typhoon in Hoi An may be calm--after all it is a fairly frequent event judging by the precautionary measures visible in Hoi An houses-- but happy?
When I was in Hanoi last January, people kept talking about the wave of crime that had hit HCMC--in particular the story of a young woman whose arm had been chopped off by some men on mopeds when she resisted having her handbag snatched. I was told that crime had increased as well in Hanoi, but not to the same level as in HCMC. One could infer that Hanoians were relatively happy that crime was not as bad as in HCMC.
The state of the economy in general, and of my friends' own financial circumstances more specifically, was a source of anxiety.
In one village that I have visited multiple times over the years, just a few years ago, the mood was optimistic. There was a feeling of affluence and people from neighboring villagers flocked there to seek work. Last year, however, the economy turned sour. The village's economy was export oriented. As orders dried up, factories closed. It affected not only the owners and the villagers but also day laborers from nearby villages.
And then, there are the rural people, who, unable to make a living in their villages, become (mostly illegal) guest workers, foreign wives or prostitutes.
Nothing to do with freedom of speech.
Hue Tam Ho Tai
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From: David Brown <nworbd@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 10:17 AM
To: Thomas Jandl <thjandl@yahoo.com>, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thomas, in my mind the question is whether the subjective perception of 'happiness' reported by the poll correlates in any way to changes in the macro environment.
The poll has been conducted annually for at least five years. I have browsed in vain for country-specific time series data, but to my recollection, the results for Vietnam have varied hardly at all. You are right to doubt that lack of transparency or freedom of speech upset enough Vietnamese to cause even a blip. However, over the last five years there have been two nasty bouts of inflation followed by tight credit, a substantial slowdown in accustomed economic growth, considerable rural discontent linked to land confiscation, urban grumbling about quality of life issues and an obviously growing gap between the haves and the left behind. In the same period, the percentage of people regularly going online has risen by circa 50% to >1/3 of the population; one result of this is broader and quicker awareness of events outside one's home area. These phenomena ought to have been sufficient to cause perturbations in the Gallup data; so far there's no evidence that they have.
David Brown
freelance researcher & journalist
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From: Ben Quick <bquick@email.arizona.edu>
Date: Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 12:52 PM
To: David Brown <nworbd@gmail.com>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
@Hue Tam Ho Tai,
This Tucsonan agrees with you completely about this:
"Doesn't the answer depend on timing as well as factors already mentioned? If you were to ask people in Phoenix, AZ, where the temperature today is around 130F if they're happy, the answer might be very different than when the temperature is not quite so high."
It was 115F here two days ago, though now the monsoon has begun. Still, January in Tucson reminds us why we stay. June reminds us why we think of leaving every year. That said, most of us in Tucson think any day in Phoenix is an unhappy day indeed. :)
@Ben Stocking,
I'll throw an anecdotal answer out to this question/statement.
"If we surveyed migrant farmworkers in the United States, I wonder how many would say they are happy."
Living in the largest migrant freeway and teaching many students with migrant farm-worker parents, I'll say the % saying yes is quite likely very high. As to why? An appreciation for simple things like feeding one's family? Closeness to the earth? I can't say for certain, though I suspect the Vietnamese answers are similar.
Generally speaking, I will say that I've never been happier than I was on those mornings taking coffee with my friend Hai and his partners on the little side street in Ha Noi. I will also say that it's hard not to notice the sickness of an American culture that demands longer and longer work days for material items that bind us to a never ending cycle of commitments and debt. That said, the likelihood any person in the states will die from an easily treatable infection or common cold is practically nil.
My two cents,
Ben Quick
University of Arizona
Ben Quick
University of Arizona
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 1:10 PM
To: Ben Quick <bquick@email.arizona.edu>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
@Ben Quick
I will add to my earlier post that last January, the weather was absolutely miserable in Hanoi. This may have colored my friends' mood as well as mine.
A week ago, I received an email from a friend who was attending some festival, mostly outdoors, in Hoi An in 40deg Celsius. It was part of her job. Would she have complained about her job, the frequent traveling, the low pay, the many annoyances if the temperature had not been so brutal? I suspect she might not have.
But I agree with Giao that youth may have something to do with the kind of answers the poll elicited. It's the Vietnamese sandwich generatipn that does most of the worrying.
Hue Tam Ho Tai