Indonesians are flourishing. People in the UK, Germany, and Spain? Not so much, global survey finds
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Wealth isn't the only key to happiness and well-being, according to a new global survey that aimed to pinpoint exactly what it means to flourish in all parts of life.
Called the
Global Flourishing Study
, the survey asked about people's physical health, happiness, sense of meaning, character, relationships, financial security, and spiritual well-being – factors the researchers said make up a holistic measure of flourishing.
It included more than 200,000 people in 22 countries spanning six continents, making it one of the world's largest well-being surveys. In Europe, the countries included were Germany, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
Everything considered, Indonesia had the highest flourishing score, followed by Israel and the Philippines. Japan landed at the bottom of the list, with Turkey and the United Kingdom rounding out the bottom three.
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'The ordering of these countries was not necessarily what we had anticipated,' Tyler VanderWeele, one of the study's authors and a researcher at Harvard University in the United States, said during a press briefing.
'While the richer, developed countries do report higher on things like financial security and also life evaluation… they don't report as high on meaning, on relationships, on pro-social character,' he added.
A chart shows the flourishing score by country.
The findings appear to contradict the annual World Happiness Report; European countries
tend to dominate
the top slots. Sweden, for example, is fourth in the happiness report but in the middle of the pack in the new flourishing analysis, between the US and South Africa.
VanderWeele said that could be because the flourishing report is more comprehensive, whereas the happiness study is based on how people evaluate their lives.
'Once you take these other aspects of well-being into account, the list really does look different,' he said.
The researchers noted that it can be difficult to directly compare countries on surveys because of language and cultural differences that shape how people respond to questionnaires.
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But some big-picture patterns did emerge, but with exceptions.
For example, married people and those who were highly educated tended to report higher levels of well-being. But in India and Tanzania, single people were better off, and in Hong Kong and Australia, less educated people were more likely to be flourishing.
People who were part of religious communities also reported higher well-being, the study found. Even having attended religious services during childhood helped predict whether someone flourished as an adult.
'Young people are not doing well'
Age also seemed to play a major role in how people fared, though the trends differed by country. In Australia, Brazil, and the US, flourishing increased with age, but it fell with age in Poland and Tanzania.
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Other countries, including Japan and Kenya, had a U-shaped pattern, where well-being started high, fell, and then rose again throughout people's lifetimes.
But when the researchers looked at all 200,000 people together, they found that flourishing was essentially flat for people ages 18 to 49, with well-being only rising later in life.
That could be a warning sign that young people are not doing as well as previous generations were at their age, the study authors said, citing mental health problems as a potential culprit.
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They said it is not clear whether the 'troubling' global trend is because young people tend to start off lower on the flourishing scale and then see their lives improve with age, or if it's simply harder to be a young person today than in the past.
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But they plan to follow the same people over several years, so they may be able to find out.
'In many countries, young people are not doing well,' VanderWeele said. 'I think this is a real concern… We need to pay attention to this'.
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