CANCÚN, Quintana Roo — Residents of Quintana Roo reported slightly higher-than-average life satisfaction in Mexico’s latest national well-being survey, placing the state in the upper half of the country even as the same survey showed a more complicated picture around mood, anxiety and security.
The 2025 National Survey of Self-Reported Well-Being, or ENBIARE, was released by Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography, INEGI. The survey asks adults to evaluate their own lives across several dimensions, including overall life satisfaction, emotional balance, purpose, mental-health indicators, economic pressure, social support and satisfaction with specific aspects of daily life.
On the main life-satisfaction question, Quintana Roo residents gave an average score of 8.66 out of 10, slightly above the national average of 8.62. In the Yucatán Peninsula, Yucatán scored 8.70, while Campeche and Quintana Roo both recorded 8.66.
The numbers suggest that, despite visible challenges in the Mexican Caribbean, including rapid growth, traffic, high housing costs, tourism volatility and public-security concerns, many residents still describe their lives in broadly positive terms.
Men in Quintana Roo reported an average life-satisfaction score of 8.76, while women averaged 8.57. That gender gap is consistent with the national pattern. Across Mexico, men reported an average of 8.67, compared with 8.57 for women.
Nationally, the highest overall life-satisfaction scores were recorded in Coahuila at 8.85, followed by Tamaulipas at 8.79, Durango at 8.78, Sinaloa at 8.77 and Baja California Sur at 8.77. The lowest averages were reported in Oaxaca, Tabasco, Michoacán, Guerrero and Zacatecas.
The survey also showed that Mexicans’ overall life satisfaction has improved since the pandemic period. INEGI reported a national average of 8.62 in 2025, up from 8.45 in 2021, when the earlier survey was conducted in a context still heavily shaped by COVID-19.
Still, the results are not simply a “happiest states” ranking. ENBIARE is a subjective well-being survey, meaning it measures how people perceive and evaluate their own lives, not whether a state has the best wages, safest streets or strongest public services.
That distinction matters in Quintana Roo. While residents gave the state a relatively strong life-satisfaction score, the broader regional data reported by La Jornada Maya showed Quintana Roo among the lower-scoring states for general emotional balance, with an average of 4.97 on INEGI’s scale. Emotional balance compares positive and negative feelings experienced the day before the interview. A positive score means favorable emotions predominated, but Quintana Roo’s score was still among the lowest in the national table.
The survey also found that 12.9 percent of adults in Quintana Roo showed signs of depression, higher than Yucatán’s 12.3 percent and Campeche’s 10 percent, according to the peninsula breakdown.
Nationally, ENBIARE found that mental health and economic pressure are closely connected to life satisfaction. Among people with signs of anxiety, only 43.5 percent reported being totally satisfied with life, compared with 64.3 percent among those without signs of anxiety. People who said they could easily cover regular household expenses were also much more likely to report high life satisfaction than those facing financial difficulty.
Security remains another weak point in the national picture. While overall life satisfaction increased, satisfaction with citizen security fell from 6.58 in 2021 to 6.08 in 2025, making it one of the worst-evaluated areas in the survey. Women rated security lower than men, with a national average of 5.95 compared with 6.22 for men.
For Quintana Roo, the findings point to a familiar contradiction. Many people continue to value the quality of life associated with the Mexican Caribbean, including family life, climate, community ties, natural surroundings and economic opportunity. At the same time, the state faces real pressures from fast urban growth, uneven wages, insecurity, expensive housing and the stresses that come with a tourism-driven economy.
In other words, Quintana Roo residents are still reporting that life here is generally good. But the same survey suggests that well-being is not only about sunshine and scenery. Mental health, safety, household finances and social support all shape how people actually feel about daily life.
ENBIARE’s value is that it adds those human measures to the usual economic indicators. For a state like Quintana Roo, where growth is often measured in hotel rooms, airport arrivals and real estate investment, the survey asks a more personal question: how do the people living here feel their lives are going?
