Just tryin' to keep the customer satisfied, satisfied

I've been pretty interested in the new Latinobarómetro press release this morning that the dudes there published yesterday in light of this weekend's Presidential election in Peru. It takes the 2010 data compiled by Latinobarómetro and mostly compares LatAm to Peru on plenty of different criteria. Highly reco'd to Spanish speaking readers (click here to get your own copy) but here I'd like to focus in on one of the main criteria featured, that of "life satisfaction".

When asked (translated), "In general terms, how satisfied are you with your life? Would you say that you are a) Very satisfied b) Quite satisfied c) Not very satisfied d) Not at all satisfied" the answers that called "very satisfied" and "quite satisfied" added together as follows:

(quick note: there was no survey taken in 2002).

So Peruvians are plenty under the regional average and score consistently low over time, as well. Seems to me that all this economic growth hasn't managed to make it to the poor...strange that, innit? And just to give that more context, here's the LatAm-wide results for 2010, with the percentage score of each country's satisfaction with life given (lowest Bolivia 52%, highest Costa Rica 86%)

By the way, don't tell Fox News who's in third joint second (rightly corrected by reader). Well on second thoughts you can, cos they'd never report it anyway.

Latinobarometro 2009, out now

Get your copy of the 115 page report on this link right here.

By the way, it's an 8.5 mega PDF download, so be patient.

Two links worth passing on

First, this one to The Economist that does a fair job of summing up the 115 page Latinobarómetro 2008 survey (I suppose..the survey is big and TE has editorial space limits). I'm happy not to have to comment too much on Latin America's most important yearly survey (apart from a big YAY for Paraguay and Uruguay); last year it was a roaring silence from the media, but now that The Economist has picked up the ball it'll get thrown around the chattering classes for sure. At the bottom of the TE note is the link to get your copy of the report for free (it's only available in Spanish).

The second link is to this story in The Asia Sentinel that says China will not make any more investments in overseas mining for the time being. This is scary news for all the Canadian juniors down here and food for thought all round. I should add that I don't know how reliable the Asia Sentinel is, the note has no named byline and no links to sources. So I'm just passing it on as it is. You be the judge, yeah?

UPDATE: On the subject of the chattering classes...BOREV IN DA HOUSE