People living in Belgium are generally satisfied with their lives.
According to the latest figures by the Eurostat statistics agency, Belgian residents gave themselves a score of 7.6/10 – putting them in third place in the whole of the European Union,
Austria scored the highest (7.9), followed by a shared second place for Finland, Poland and Romania (each 7.7). Despite the fact that Belgium was recently named one of the most stressful countries in the world to live in, it now shares its third place with the Netherlands – well ahead of the EU average (7.1).
"Belgium has finished pretty high in this ranking for a long time. Life satisfaction in Belgium has always been very stable," demographer Patrick Deboosere (VUB) told The Brussels Times. The survey does not measure quantifiable data but instead asks respondents how satisfied they are with their lives.
"The ranking is based on subjective data, but the outcome has always been closely linked to general prosperity," he said. "Countries that do well have always been those where people have a relatively high income and with good social security."
While wealthy countries such as Finland, Denmark (7.5) and Sweden (7.4) have traditionally finished high in the ranking, Deboosere explained Poland's high ranking by the country's great economic progress in recent years.
Still, he underlined that while a reasonable income and a good safety net are usually the two elements that contribute the most, "people also get satisfaction from their relationships with others, and things like hobbies, for example."
The three countries with the lowest score were Greece (6.8), Germany (6.7) and Bulgaria (5.6). "For Germany, there has been a downwards trend for a while, mainly following some recent reforms that have seen growing poverty, especially in the east of the country," Deboosere added.
Still, for 18 of the 27 EU countries, overall life satisfaction was rated above or the same as the EU average and in all countries except Bulgaria (5.6), average ratings were above 6 – meaning that most people in the EU declared themselves satisfied rather than dissatisfied.
