To many Armenians, worn out by everything from rampant corruption to economic woes, it may come as no surprise that Armenia ranks as the world’s #2 suffering country (after Bulgaria) in Gallup’s latest global wellbeing poll. It is a ranking that leaves the rest of the South Caucasus and Eurasia far behind.
To be precise, the poll (of 1,000 respondents) found that Armenia's level of suffering stands at 37 percent. Georgia, a comparatively sized neighbor with its own economic and security problems, suffers by 16-percentage points less.
Azerbaijan, the richest yet least democratic of the South-Caucasus trio, apparently suffers the least, at 15 percent of its respondents.
Overall, the survey, released on December 2, makes the Russian maxim that “It is better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick” ring truer than ever. The line of inquiry is broad -- linking "thriving" to job-security and access to healthcare, for instance.
Nonetheless, some surprises did emerge: the UK and Uzbekistan allegedly sharing the same level of suffering, for one.
Yet the Gallup pollsters, who did both face-to-face and over-the-phone interviews, did not just call up randomly selected respondents to ask how they're doing on a given day. Criteria under examination included the amount of income, optimism, stress, physical pain, worry and anger.
The data, though, is based on how respondents rate their own lives. How the survey compensated for cultural differences toward public expressions of feelings is not clear.
As one video shows, even in the compact South Caucasus, those differences can run strong.
*The Tamada's initially published poll results have been amended to correct an editor's misunderstanding of the online Gallup-poll data.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
Sign up for Eurasianet's free weekly newsletter. Support Eurasianet: Help keep our journalism open to all, and influenced by none.