JAKARTA (The Jakarta Post/ANN): Indonesia ranks among the world’s happiest and most optimistic countries, according to US-based Gallup International’s 41st Annual Global End of Year Survey.

The survey, which was conducted in 55 countries between October and December 2017, asked respondents questions on three topics: hope, economic optimism and happiness.

Gallup International’s report on the survey crowned Indonesia “this year’s winner” in overall optimism with a net score of +66.

When asked whether they thought 2018 would be better or worse than 2017, 73 percent of the 1,026 Indonesians polled said this year would be better while only 6 percent said it would be worse, putting Indonesia at the top of the survey’s Hope Index with a score of +67.

In the Economic Optimism Index, 63 percent of Indonesians believed that 2018 would be a year of economic prosperity for the country, making Indonesia (+53), the third most economically optimistic out of the 55 countries polled.

In the survey's Happiness Index, 73 percent of polled Indonesians said they felt happy about their lives, placing the country (+68) above developed countries such as the US, the UK, Germany and Japan .

Overall, however, the survey showed that the world was more pessimistic than it was last year, with only 40 percent of global respondents hopeful that this year would be better than the last, or 13 points down compared to the result in 2016. A mere 28 percent believed that 2018 would be economically prosperous.