After 20-year war, Afghanistan reports lowest well-being in recorded history

(Press-News.org) In 2022, after U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban regained power, Afghans reported an average life satisfaction of 1.28 on a scale from 0 to 10—or from the worst possible life to the best possible life—a global, all-time low, according to a new study published today 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.” 

“Afghanistan is quite different as Afghans have reported low life satisfaction and even lower hope, which likely reflects profound distress and despair within the country." 

The study was conducted alongside assistant professor Felix Cheung, Department of Psychology postdoctoral fellow Phyllis Lun and researchers from Cheung’s Population Well-Being Lab, Mei Yang and Kenith Chan. It draws on data collected in the Gallup World Poll and the World Database of Happiness. 

“This research shines a light on the wellbeing, the life satisfaction, of a people who have been left behind. They’ve been left behind by the U.S., they’ve been left behind by the international community, and they’ve been left behind by international news organizations,” Stutzman says. 

Their research also underlines the impacts that life circumstances and structural factors—like war and political unrest—can have on subjective well-being. Life circumstances have previously been downplayed in leading well-being theories and models, which prioritized genetic factors and intentional activities like exercise and practicing gratitude.  

“Our own sense of wellbeing, our own happiness, isn’t solely up to us. A lot of it is structural,” Stutzman explains. 

Researchers analyzed face-to-face interview data collected in Afghanistan over three periods: before the U.S. withdrawal in 2018 and 2019, during the U.S. withdrawal and first month of Taliban rule in 2021, and after the U.S. withdrawal in 2022. 

In 2018, Afghans rated their life satisfaction at 2.69. That measure did not significantly decline in 2021, during the early stages of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the first month of renewed Taliban rule. But after the U.S. withdrawal and the consolidation of Taliban rule in 2022, life satisfaction in Afghanistan dropped to previously unseen levels. 

In 2022, nearly all Afghans reported a life satisfaction score below 5, and two in three Afghans reported a life satisfaction score of either 0 or 1.  

Life satisfaction may be understood differently in varying contexts, so more work is needed to define the cross-cultural comparability of subjective well-being. As such, these findings do not necessarily mean that Afghans experienced the lowest subjective well-being of all time.   

They do highlight the structural challenges and deep suffering that Afghan people have and continue to face. A deeper analysis shows that women and people living in rural areas have been disproportionately affected, due to the Taliban placing increased restrictions on women’s rights and rural communities lacking resources to help combat food insecurity.   

For the study’s authors, it is critical that the plight of Afghans is not forgotten, especially in the West, and that the international community can be spurred into action. They point out that the struggles facing Afghans have not been widely reported on since 2022, when thousands of Afghans descended on the airport in Kabul desperately trying to flee the country—some clinging to the outside of moving planes. 

“Just because the war has ended, it doesn’t mean that every problem has been solved,” Cheung explains. “That is the first step of a very long recovery process — a process that requires investments in necessities like healthcare, food and water, and infrastructure, and is informed by evidence.  

Looking ahead, researchers from the Population Well-Being Lab will be examining the life satisfaction and hope of civilians embroiled in other ongoing wars and conflict, such as people in Ukraine during the 2022 Russian invasion. 

Background Information 

The War in Afghanistan began in 2001, triggered by the U.S. and its allies after al-Qaeda's September 11 attacks and the Taliban government’s refusal to surrender al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.  

The U.S. and its allies removed the Taliban from power within the first three months of the war and established a new government, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Despite this initial success, the U.S.-led conflict against the Taliban continued for nearly two decades, ultimately resulting in the violent death of more than 165,000 Afghans.  

In 2018 and 2019, the first period examined in this study, the U.S. and its allies killed more civilians than at any point in the war since at least 2006. During this time, the U.S. and its allies increased the frequency of airstrikes in an attempt to pressure the Taliban to negotiate. Hundreds of civilians were killed in these strikes—40% of them children. 

The Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in August 2021, after President Biden announced that the U.S. troops would withdraw from the country by the end of August 2022. A period of significant uncertainty followed, only growing when then President Ashraf Ghani fled Afghanistan and thousands of Afghans attempted to flee at the Kabul airport. 

As U.S. troops withdrew in 2022, Afghanistan also suffered devastating earthquakes and drought, cuts to humanitarian aid from the international community, public health crises and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, increased food insecurity, economic collapse, and controversial policies imposed by the Taliban government.

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