Hong Kong people are the saddest they’ve been in almost a decade, according to an annual survey by the Faculty of Business of Chu Hai College and Lingnan University.
A total of 920 people aged 21 and above were surveyed over the month of September. Respondents across all age brackets ranked their happiness this year at 67.6 on a scale from zero to 100 (100 being the happiest), which is 2.4 points down from last year’s score of 70, and the lowest the index has been since 2007.
In keeping with the stereotype of sad young millennials, it turns out people under 30 are especially despondent. The results for those aged 29 and under are the lowest since 2006, having plummeted from 69.3 in 2015 to 63.8.
Amongst that demographic, sentiment was particularly low when they were posed the question, “is life really worth living?”, with an average score of 6.63 out of 10 compared to last year’s result of 7.36, Ming Pao reports. In fairness to them, that question is a huge bummer.
Apparently Hongkongers aged 30 to 49 think life is marginally more worth living this year than last year, with their score increasing from 7.20 to 7.28.
In contrast, the score for people aged 50 and above dropped from 7.36 to 7.29 in response to the same question.
In news that will surprise literally nobody, those who work 60 hours or more per week were less happy than those who work 40-49 hours a week.
Chu Hai College’s dean of business Professor Ho Lok-sang, who led the survey, told the SCMP he believed young people felt disenfranchised by matters “beyond their control” like the lack of political reform.
Seeing as the happiness index has decreased year on year since 2014, the year of the mass Occupy rallies, he may have a point…
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