The number of people in Belgium who felt happy at the end of 2023 dropped significantly compared to the previous quarter and was much lower than the same period in other years.
Just over six in ten Belgians (62.3%) responded to a Statbel poll conducted in the fourth quarter of 2023 that they always or mostly feel happy. This is a significant drop compared to the third quarter, when 66.6% responded feeling this way, and the lowest percentage since the survey began in the third quarter of 2021.
Every quarter since the third quarter of 2021, the Belgian statistics office has surveyed some 5,000 Belgians aged between 16 and 74 about their personal well-being and living conditions.
Of the 62.3% of people living in the country who indicated that they were always or mostly felt happy, a mere 8% said they were always happy, while 54.3% were happy most of the time. At the other end of the spectrum, 6.5% were rarely happy and 1.5% said they were never happy.
Behind the national figures hide striking regional differences. For example, Flanders is by far the "happiest" place in the country. Here, 65.5% of people indicated always (9.5%) or usually being happy (65%) at the end of 2023. Meanwhile, in the Walloon Region, the figures were 5.9% and 54.2%.
In the Brussels-Capital Region, the total was as low as 51.8% (6.5% always felt happy and 45.3% most of the time). In the capital, this represents a drop of 10 percentage points compared to the third quarter, when 54.3% of people here still felt happy most of the time.
While Statbel did not explain the significant drop, its figures related to income change did show that almost 12% of people in Brussels saw their income drop, compared to 7.5% during the third quarter of 2023. Additionally, more than 53% responded that it was (extremely) difficult to make ends meet at the end of the year, compared to 42.4% nationally. Far fewer people in Brussels indicated feeling content with their financial situation.
Differences in age and gender
In contrast with the latest World Happiness Report, published on Wednesday, Statbel's figures showed young people (16-24 years old) generally appear to be the happiest population group (71%), in contrast to people aged 65-74 (57.3%).
The decline in happiness is evident among 25-49-year-olds (from 66.9% to 62.6%) as well as among 50-64-year-olds (from 66% to 59.9%), and 65-74-year-olds (from 62.8% to 57.3%).
The major gap between the share of young people feeling happy and older people's sense of happiness can partly be explained due to people's feelings of loneliness, which were also probed in the survey. While 5.6% of people aged 16 to 24 sometimes or always felt lonely, this figure was almost 10% among those aged 65 to 74.
The decline is also greater among women (from 67.6% to 61.3%) than among men (from 65.7% to 63.2%).
