According to VCIOM, the level of happiness of Russian people has not fell below 80% for already two years.
Despite the different circumstances and difficulties of life, 81% of citizens today consider themselves happy.
Young people (88% among 18-24 year olds) and people with high incomes (95%) are most optimistic.
At the same time, according to the overwhelming majority of respondents, the main guarantee of happiness is traditional values. 20% of respondents found the happiness in family, and 20% in children. 14% of respondents are happy with their work, and 13% with their health and well-being.
According to respondents, the obstacles to happiness are of economic nature: material constraints in general (7%), low wages (4%) and unemployment (3%).
According to the head of VCIOM research projects, Mikhail Mamonov, on the one hand, the emphasis on family values is a stabilizing factor, on the other hand, it highlights requests to the authorities precisely on family policy. "This includes the situation in education, health and social support for families," the expert noted.
According to the analysis of social media mentions of the 'happiness' word in the Russian regions, conducted by the 'Medialogia' company, the top-5 cities includes Moscow (20.2% of mentions), Saint Petersburg (18.4% of mentions), Crimea (4 3% of mentions), Tatarstan (3.1% of mentions) and the Novosibirsk region (2.9% of mentions).
VTsIOM poll was held 5-6 November 2016 Participation in the study involved 1,600 people in 130 settlements in 46 regions and republics of the eight federal districts of Russia.
The survey was conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) among 1600 people in 130 population centers in 46 regions of Russia on November 5-6, 2016.
Commenting on the survey data, the director of the Center for Political Information, Alexei Mukhin, told Vestnik Kavkaza that in this connection it is appropriate to recall the proverb "money isn't everything". According to the expert, this folk truth explains such a high index of happiness, registered by VCIOM. "The core values of the classic consumer society are not yet sufficiently present in Russia, and in some sense we are knocked out of the framework of ordinary consumers," the expert pointed out.
For citizens, who feel themselves confident in the geopolitical space, according to Mukhin, happiness lies elsewhere. "I believe that Russia's new role in the geopolitical space, as well as some comfort, felt by Russians in the 2000s and now, have given a certain sense of confidence. And this sense of confidence has given rise to emotional recovery, which was registered by the sociologists," Alexei Mukhin concluded.
The director of the Institute of Political Studies Sergei Markov, in turn, recalled that the "happiness index" was introduced by the United Nations due to the fact that economic statistics is not enough to understand life in the countries of the world. "At first they thought that the happiness index will slightly differ in the countries of approximately the same economic level, but then it turned out that the difference is so enormous, that there is almost no correlation between the economy and citizens' happiness. It was found that the suicide rate is high in high income countries, particularly in Northern Europe, and on the happiness index is very high in such poor countries as Nigeria, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic," he said.
As for Russia, a sense of happiness of our citizens is correlated with a sense of justice, he said. "I think this is due to the reunification of Crimea with Russia. Also, I think they feel that they do the right thing, when Russia supports the rebellious population of Donbass. This level of happiness has the same cause as the highest support of President Vladimir Putin: it is associated with a sense of that we do the right thing," Sergey Markov concluded.
