Who wants to love more?

In a global report, the point on the diffusion of the feeling par excellence in people's lives

The humanist sciences aim to study the mechanisms that maximize love between people and their happiness. Every now and then politicians remember to propose economic and social strategies that increase the rate of happiness and people's ability to love themselves, to know how to love themselves and to feel loved.

For several years, two famous books The World Book of Love and The World Book of Happiness have been distributed to all heads of state and heads of government. In the two books, the best experts on love and happiness describe the policies that work and how some countries have done it. Among the many global indices and reports - after the most famous World Report on Happiness - the World Report on Love has also been released, which offers analysis of the spread of love in people's lives. The report compares the countries where people feel most loved with per capita income, with the peace index and with love for the environment.

In Asian countries, love is more widespread and more perceived by people, also because their millenary collectivist cultures have oriented lifestyles towards the common good rather than the individual one.

The Philippines won the world championship of love with its 93% of people feeling loved. Every February, in honor of Valentine's Day, the Philippine government sponsors mass wedding ceremonies for hundreds of couples. A few years ago, the Philippines set a world record for the number of couples kissing simultaneously for 10 seconds (the final count: 5,122).

Economist Justin Wolfers believes that: «The global love index is the most comprehensive ever constructed». Since 2006, the polling company Gallup has asked people in 136 countries whether they had experienced love in some way the previous day. The study revealed that on a typical day, approximately 70% of the world's population reports feeling love.

At the bottom of the ranking was Armenia, where only 29% of those interviewed felt loved. In the United States 81% responded affirmatively and in Italy 79% (place 32 in the ranking).

Wolfers warns against too easy deductions: «The differences between countries could be due to the way in which cultures define love and not to real daily experiences. For example, in some realities, the idea of "love" is limited to the romantic partner, while in others it extends to one's family, friends and the entire community where one lives."

Wolfers and his wife, economist Betsey Stevenson, analyzed global data and came to some unexpected conclusions, including the observation that feelings of love peak when people are between 30 and 45, and that unmarried couples who live together report receiving more love than married spouses (source: The Atlantic).

Sandro Calvani

NP Febbraio 2023