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HOW HAPPY ARE PINOYS WITH SEX?
by Dr. Romulo A. Virola ¹
Secretary General, NSCB

Two months ago, Statistically Speaking wrote about measuring progress of societies. As promised in that article, last Tuesday, we presented  during the 10th National Convention on Statistics a paper entitled: “Measuring Progress of Philippine Society: Gross National Product or Gross National Happiness?” The paper was written jointly with Jessamyn O. Encarnacion.

The National Convention on Statistics (NCS) is a triennial forum for exchanging ideas and experiences in statistics and for discussing recent statistical developments and prevailing issues and problems of the Philippine Statistical System (PSS). It seeks to elicit the cooperation and support of statisticians and professionals in related fields from the government, academe and private sector towards a more responsive PSS.

This year, the NCS was held simultaneously with the opening ceremonies of the annual celebration of the National Statistics Month, now on its eighteenth year,  together with the conduct of the Student-Faculty Conference, the International Conference on the Millennium Development Goals Statistics (ICMDGS) and the Statistical Information Management Exhibition (SIMEX).  The theme of the multi-event celebration is “Statistics and Action: A Road to a Better Life Through the MDGs”.

The Student Faculty Conference was organized by the UP Los Banos Institute of Statistics and the UP Diliman School of Statistics. Close to 200 students and faculty members from the two schools were joined by their colleagues from La Salle and the Central Luzon State University.

The ICMDGS was attended by  close to 90  local and foreign delegates from 28 countries from the Asia Pacific, Africa, North America, South America and Europe.

The opening was graced by Dr. Paul Cheung, Director of the United Nations Statistics Division and Acting Secretary of Socio-Economic Planning Augusto B. Santos. The joint opening ceremonies was followed immediately by a plenary session where two papers were presented: “MDG Statistics and Global Monitoring” by Francesca Perucci of the UN Statistics Division and “The Philippines’ MDGs: Where are we now?”  by Erlinda Capones of the NEDA.

A total of 120 invited and contributed papers were presented in the 10th NCS, while the Student-Faculty Conference drew in 43 papers. The final session of the NCS was held in  plenary chaired by Atty. Purificacion Valera-Quisumbing, Chair of the Commission on Human Rights. Two papers were presented: “Removing the Cloak of Invisibility, Integrating Unpaid Household Services in the Nation’s Economic Accounts” by Prof. Solita C. “Mareng Winnie” Monsod and “Governance Statistics: Did Performance Matter in the 2007 Elections?”, written jointly by this writer, Severa B. De Costo, Noel S. Nepomuceno, Kristine Faith S. Agtarap, Ma. Ivy T. Querubin and Mai Lin C. Villaruel.  Mayor Ma. Lourdes C.  Fernando of Marikina City was discussant of the session.

The Hon. Undersecretary Mariano S. Salazar of the DOE delivered a message during the closing ceremonies, and gave awards to the winners of the 17th NSM Best Activity by Category and Best Region, assisted by Dir. Benjamin D. Turiano of NEDA who was Chair of the Awards  Committee. The DOE won the awards for the best activity while Region I won as Best Region. 

It was during the Invited Paper Session on  Measuring Economic Progress, that  I presented the subject of this article. Since the topic dwelt on progress of societies, I started by asking  the following questions, Why do we work?, Would we rather be rich or would we rather be happy?, What do we really want in life?,  How do we measure progress? Should measures of national progress capture our own personal progress?

As mentioned in the Statistically Speaking article, the Istanbul Declaration that was issued during the 2nd OECD World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Policy, encouraged us to consider for ourselves what progress meant in the 21st century. In line with this, we have conceptualized the Philippine Happiness Index which we propose to link with a Philippine Economic Index to come up with the Philippine Gross National Happiness Index.

In the formulation of the Philippine Happiness Index (PHI), we were guided by the following premises: economic progress and happiness are not synonymous, Philippine progress should capture the happiness of the (individual) Filipinos, the PHI should not be normative and the PHI should recognize individual differences in terms of the sources or domains of happiness and the importance attached to each domain.  

Based on the above, we conducted two pilots of the questionnaires we designed for the purpose. In the first pilot, the nonrandom samples came from a government agency and a private office. We had a list of 15 possible sources of happiness, the last of which was “Others”. The first pilot revealed that we might have missed important dimensions of happiness because the happiness of the respondents under  “Others” was the third highest. Based on suggestions made by the respondents, we therefore added three dimensions: friends, love life and sex life in the questionnaire for the second pilot which was conducted  on a nonrandom sample during the NCS. In fact, friends and love life turned out to be important sources of happiness.

So what do the “nonrandom” respondents  tell us? (Table 1)

1. On sources of happiness –

1.1. The most important sources of happiness are family, health and religion, in that order. Other important sources of happiness include friends, financial security, education, work and love life. No surprises there! Noteworthy is the fact that family is clearly the number one source, with a score of 9.45 out of 10 and health the 2nd most important source, with a score of 8.95.

1.2. Politics is the least important, scoring only 5.84. I wonder if our congressmen and senators realize this. Other unimportant domains of happiness are cultural activities, community and volunteer work and government. The National Commission for Culture and the Arts and the Philippine National Volunteer Service Coordinating Agency and related agencies obviously need to do something if they want our countrymen to appreciate what they are supposed to promote.

1.3. Quite surprising is that sex is not an important source of happiness! In fact, it is among the five least important! Could it be that the respondents were just too shy to reveal their true feelings about sex? Or time to shift stories away from the birds and the bees?

1.4. Also, leisure and sports surprisingly, is the 6th least important domain. I thought we loved Manny Paquiao! But then, his loss in the 2007 elections probably bolsters this finding. Does this mean too that, in so far as elections are concerned, actors and sports heroes are passé, but priests are in?

2. On the level of happiness –

2.1. Respondents have happy family life with a score of 88.5%; they spend happy times with friends at 83.6%, they happily practise their religion with 79.8% and enjoy their love life but only at 79.4%, a low rating I would say! Aren’t you guys forgetting to make love?

2.2. Health, which is supposed to be the second most important source of happiness, unfortunately gets only 78.0%, meaning that people are not getting any healthier or that we worry too much about our health.

2.3. Respondents derive very little happiness (or maybe much unhappiness?) from politics at 25.5% and government at 35.5%. Makes one wonder, why do politicians seem to enjoy their position? Politicians may be amusing but they apparently do not make people happy. And if politics contributes the least to Gross National Happiness, isn’t it time we abolished many elected positions in government? Question is, how?

2.4. Sex life is not considered important, but, boy, 72.6% enjoyment of sex is not bad, if work could only give 71%, leisure and sports, 70.0%, financial security, 68.8% and cultural activities, 66.6%! And yes, climate change could be an inconvenient truth, but the respondents will take sex anytime over the environment! Seriously, the DENR should take this very seriously.

Other findings (from a nonrandom sample):

1. Asking one question on happiness produces an index 10% higher than when happiness is dissected into its various domains, and questions are asked for each domain.
2. People are happier with domains that are within their control, than those not within their control like politics.
3. Six out of 10 respondents think that progress is synonymous with happiness.
4. Women are happier than men!
5. Happiness rises with income! Should we then go back to GDP/GNP?

And what might be the main message of these statistics? First is that priority should be given to the formulation of programs and building of facilities that allow people to spend quality time with their families. Second, the Church will continue to have a strong influence on our lives!

Happy Statistics Month!

Table 1. Comparison of Level of Importance and Level of Happiness by Domain

Nonrandom Sample: National Convention on Statistics Participants
	Average importance	Rank	Happiness Index	Rank
No. of respondents	167
Source/Domain of Happiness
Family	9.45	1	88.46	1
Friends	8.57	4	83.57	2
Religion and/or spiritual work	8.59	3	79.81	3
Love life	8.20	7	79.37	4
Health	8.95	2	78.02	5
Education	8.25	6	76.74	6
Sex life	6.39	14	72.57	7
Work	7.94	8	70.98	8
Leisure and sports	6.98	12	70.00	9
Community and volunteer work	6.24	15	69.14	10
Technological know-how	7.17	11	68.91	11
Income and financial security	8.30	5	68.83	12
Cultural activities	5.88	16	66.61	13
Environment	7.88	9	51.90	14
Economy	7.84	10	49.72	15
Government	6.53	13	35.49	16
Politics	5.84	17	25.49	17

Reactions and views are welcome thru email to the author at ra.virola@nscb.gov.ph.

 

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¹ Secretary General of the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) and Chairman of the Statistical Research and Training Center (SRTC). He holds a Ph. D. in Statistics from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, U.S.A. and has taught mathematics and statistics at the University of the Philippines. He is also a past president of the Philippine Statistical Association. The author thanks Jessamyn O. Encarnacion, Fe Vida N. Dy-Liacco, Glenda P. Recto, Jayne A. Monteza, Joseph M. Addawe, Noel S. Nepomuceno and Candido J. Astrologo for the assistance in the preparation of the article.

Posted 08 October 2007.