Shafaqna English– In 2022, following the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s return to power, Afghan citizens reported an average life satisfaction score of 1.28 on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 represents the worst possible life and 10 signifies the best possible life. This score marks a global all-time low, according to a recent study published in Science Advances.
That is lower than life satisfaction scores recorded in more than 170 countries since 1946, when global ratings were first tallied. In 2022, the global mean life satisfaction rating recorded in the Gallup World Poll was 5.48.
Afghans also showed little hope for the future. When asked to imagine what their lives would be like in five years on the same scale, hope among Afghans fell even lower than their life satisfaction, at 1.02.
“Globally, people expect their future to be better than their present. People are optimistic about their future,” says Levi Stutzman, a PhD student in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto and lead author of the paper “Epilogue to the war: Afghanistan reports the lowest well-being in recorded history.”
Source: Science Advances