According to the most recent Gallup survey on wellbeing (based on their Life Evaluation Index interviews conducted in 142 countries), more people globally report that they are living better lives, while also becoming more hopeful about the future, significantly more than they have in years. In 2024, a median of 33% of adults across 142 countries rated their lives well enough to be classified as “thriving,” continuing a trend of steady improvements in life evaluation going back more than a decade.
Latin America and the Caribbean (45%), East and South Europe (37%), East (34%) and Southeast Asia (32%) and Post-Soviet Eurasia (33%) have all seen steady increases in thriving. Over the past decade, the percentage that fall into the thriving category has increased by 20 points or more in 12 countries.
But the US and other “Western” countries are the striking exception. The US economy remains one of the most innovative and successful in the world, ahead of almost everybody else; yet the country reported a sharp decline in wellbeing. In 2007 in the US, 67% of people surveyed said they were thriving, but the number fell to 49% in 2024 (young people account for most of this negative phenomenon). There were other significant declines in subjective wellbeing in Western Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. For example, the percentage of people in the “thriving category” in Switzerland fell 22 points.
In short, the wealthy “Western” countries that benefit from some of the highest standards of living in the world are now experiencing the greatest declines in subjective wellbeing (though they still experience higher absolute levels of wellbeing than developing countries, but the trend is markedly down).
Like the precipitous decline in fertility rates, this is an outstanding trend that no single “theory” can explain. Economists point to the relative decline or stagnation in real incomes; sociologists to skewed expectations (the more affluent we are, the greater our expectations); psychologists to hyper-individualism, growing isolation, and the absence of community belonging; moralists to a lack of purpose and meaning associated with the pursuit of economic gains to the detriment of everything else; and so on. Whatever the explanation may be (most likely at the confluence of all the above), this dissociation between economic wealth and societal wellbeing is one of today’s major conundrums.
