Well-Being on Planet Earth

The Gallup World Poll allows a look at how humanity is flourishing, based on the answers of survey respondents sampled from across the globe. Several conclusions are clear. First, how people are doing depends enormously on the society in which they live, and nations vary from doing very well to extremely poorly. In terms of subjective well-being, nations vary greatly, in both judgments of overall life and in positive and negative emotions. The best predictors of global life judgments were income and ownership of modern conveniences, whereas the best predictors of emotions were social factors such as the control of corruption and being able to count on others, and personal factors such as learning new things and being able to control one’s day. Thus, the answer to the question of whether money makes people happy must be qualified by the measure of well-being that is being used. It is proposed that systematic measures of well-being across and within nations would allow individuals, leaders, and policy makers to make better decisions