Vietnamese Vu Thi Dao poses for a photo in Dong Nai on September 19, 2002. A few days after the Japanese record holder celebrated her 115th birthday, Vietnam may have turned up its own candidate for the title of world‘s oldest person. Like Kamato Hongo, listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest living woman, Vu Thi Dao in northern Vietnam was born in 1887. But while Hongo celebrated her 115th birthday on September 16, only Dao‘s year of birth is recorded in Vietnamese identification documents. PHOTO - REUTERS

HANOI – They think their country is doing better than most of the world, that their children have a bright future and are optimistic that life will be better five years from today. Americans? No, Vietnamese.

Despite decades of war and poverty, residents of this fast-growing, communist-ruled southeast Asian country seem to be the most upbeat in Asia, according to a survey conducted by the Washington-based Pew Research Center and published by the International Herald Tribune. The survey, which asked six questions relating to happiness and outlook, covered 38,000 people in 44 countries worldwide. In Asia respondents were from Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Philippines, China, India and Bangladesh.

Vietnamese gave a satisfaction rating of 69 percent to the state of their nation and 51 percent for the state of the world. In those categories, the Vietnamese figures were the highest or equal-highest for any country in the global survey. The respondents in the southeast Asian country of 80 million were more muted about the quality of their lives, rating that at 43 percent, but they were still happier in that respect than the people of any other Asian country except South Korea. And they were even more positive about their children. An overwhelming 98 percent of Vietnam respondents said they expected that children of today in their country would be better off when they grew up. Again, it was the most positive figure among any country surveyed globally.

But that may be unsurprising, given the rapid progress in Vietnam since it abandoned a centrally planned blueprint. The country‘s economy has been growing by at least seven percent a year, almost as quickly as China‘s and South Korea‘s. Annual incomes average $400 per person. The results did not surprise a few observers of the country.

Like many other countries in the world, Vietnamese ranked satisfaction with family lives higher than with either their household incomes or jobs. Sixty-nine percent of Vietnam respondents expected their lives to be better five years from now, the second highest rating in Asia, behind Indonesia‘s 73 percent.

Asked to rate the five dangers posing the greatest threat to the world, Vietnam broke away from the pack to pick infectious diseases and AIDS as the number-one threat. Other Asian countries were far more worried about nuclear weapons, religious and ethic hatred, environmental troubles or the gap between rich and poor. Vietnamese respondents were least interested in the wealth gap. The Philippines‘ biggest fear is nuclear weapons, while the world‘s most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, selected religious and ethnic hatred as the number-one threat to the world. Pollution and the environment was selected by a majority of China respondents as the biggest danger to the planet.

Reuters