LJUBLJANA (Slovenia), December 13 (SeeNews) - Slovenia is the second-happiest country in central Europe and the Baltic states (CEB), a comprehensive new survey of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) showed on Tuesday.

As many as 69% of Slovenians report that they are satisfied with their life, up from 60% in 2010, the lender said in its latest Life in Transition Survey. The survey questioned 51,000 households in 34 countries, mainly from transition countries in central and eastern Europe as well as Turkey. It also covered Cyprus and Greece for the first time. For the sake of comparison with more prosperous western neighbours, the survey was also carried out in Germany and Italy.

Life satisfaction in Slovenia is also higher than in Italy where it stands at 42% and the transition region as a whole with 43%, but is comparable to that of Germany where 72% of EBRD's respondents are currently satisfied with life.

However, Slovenia ranked lowest in the transition region in terms of corruption and its presence in 2016 and in the four years following the 2010 survey. Namely, only 8% of Slovenians believe that corruption is lower in 2016 than in the past four years, the EBRD survey found out.

The country was also below average in the CEB, the transition region and Germany in terms of perception of its economic and situation, with only 13% and 6% of respondents stating that the economic and political situation in Slovenia was better in 2016 than four years ago.

Of those surveyed, 19% believe that households in their country lived better in 2016 than they did four years prior to the survey. Moreover, 36% of Slovenian respondents report that they are satisfied with their current financial situation, a figure in line with the average for the CEB region of 39% and above the averages for the transition region - 31% - and Italy - 33%.

Conversely, optimism and confidence in a better future for the younger generations has declined by 7 percentage points, from 20% in 2010 to 13% in 2016. This is the lowest figure in the transition region and also lower than the corresponding German and Italian levels of optimism.

"There is almost no variation in the level of optimism reported by respondents of different age or income groups: pessimism in Slovenia turns out to be widespread across the board," the EBRD said.

In regards to attitudes towards democracy and the market economy, support for both has increased slightly since 2010.

The proportion of Slovenian respondents who choose the response option “democracy is preferable to any other form of political system” has risen by 2 percentage points since the last survey, from 54% in 2010 to 56% in 2016. In addition, 45% of respondents favour the market economy over any other alternative, a figure that is higher than the averages for CEB, the transition region and Italy.

However, when asked a hypothetical question about whether they would rather live in a country with full political liberties but weak economic growth - country B - or in a country with limited freedoms and stronger growth - country A - about 82% of Slovenian respondents report that they would prefer to live in country A, the EBRD survey showed.

When asked which democratic institutions exist in the country, 70% of respondents mentioned peace and stability, followed by freedom of speech, free elections and gender equality at 62%, 55% and 53%, respectively.

In terms of quality of public services, around 90% of Slovenian respondents report being satisfied with the quality of public services in their country, the only exception being the local road network, which is deemed to be of sufficient quality by only 47% of those surveyed.

Slovenia seem to also be overly satisfied with attitudes to women, with 97% of female respondents and 92% of male respondents stating that women are as competent as men to be business executives, two of the highest figures in the transition region.

Furthermore, only 22% of Slovenians think that men make better political leaders than women, a number comparable to the CEB average and below the Italian - 29% - and transition region - 50% - averages.

In contract, only 29% of the population seem to prefer a traditional family arrangement where the man works and the woman takes care of the family, the third-lowest figure in the transition region.