Levels of subjective well-being around the world

44. Several recent studies have documented patterns of subjective well-being levels among countries, including the World Happiness Report (Helliwell, Layard and Sachs, 2012; 2013) and How’s Life? (OECD 2011; 2013b), both of which draw on the Gallup World Poll (Box 3). The World Values Survey data set has also been used extensively to explore international patterns of life satisfaction.

Box 3. The Gallup World Poll

The Gallup World Poll is a large scale repeated cross-sectional survey which has sampled more than 150 countries and territories (representing 98% of the world’s adult population) since 2006. As of 2014, eight waves of data have been collected (2005/06, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013), although not all countries and territories have participated in all waves. The frequency of the survey is usually annual, but sometimes several waves are collected within a year (e.g. four waves in the United Kingdom, Egypt, Germany and India in 2012).

Sample sizes are generally limited to around 1,000 respondents in each country or territory, with some exceptions (e.g. 2000 for some large countries such as the Russian Federation and China). This small sample size limits comparisons across population sub-groups within countries.

The Gallup Organization generally employs face-to-face interviews in Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, EECCA countries, and nearly all of Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and telephone surveys in developed countries where telephone coverage is at least 80% of the population. China and Lebanon are the only countries where a mixed-mode (both face to face and telephone) interview method is used. The sample is ex-ante designed to be nationally representative of the entire population aged 15 and over (including rural areas), but non-random response patterns are a likely source of ex-post bias. This issue is addressed by the post-stratification weights provided by Gallup. The weighting procedure has multiple stages: first, geographic disproportionalities (e.g. due to oversampling in major cities) are adjusted; second, an adjustment is applied for sample selection probabilities (number of adults in the household; landline and mobile dual users); and third, the weights adjust the data to make them more representative of the general population, correcting any sampling biases in relation to age, gender and educational attainment.

The survey is based on a common questionnaire designed with the help of several academic experts¹⁵. One distinctive feature of the survey is that it combines information on both subjective well-being, and on people’s self-assessments of the most important objective determinants of subjective well-being. The core questionnaire asks respondents a broad set of questions on socio-economic background, law and order, migration, civic engagement, personal health, and material living conditions. One key subjective well-being measure included is the Cantril ladder (or Ladder of Life). This asks respondents to imagine a ladder with rungs from 0 to 10, where 10 is the best possible life for them and 0 is the worst possible life. Respondents are asked to indicate where on the ladder they would place their own life. While this question is only one way to measure life evaluation, it is referred to as life evaluation from here on. The core questionnaire also includes a series of questions about affect and experienced well-being “yesterday”. These include whether respondents experienced a lot of anger, sadness, worry, enjoyment, feeling well-rested, and laughing or smiling. Unfortunately, several questions (e.g. concerning life satisfaction and eudaimonia) were not asked in all waves, but only in some waves and/or in some locations.

Overall, the Gallup World Poll dataset used in this report included 1,220,429 observations, covering 161 countries and territories over 8 years, totaling 1,002 country-years or 1,131 country-surveys. In several of the later analyses, the sample size has been roughly halved due to missing observations. One major loss of sample size is due to the absence of employment variables before 2009, which leads to the exclusion of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guyana, Belize, and Namibia. Further details of the sample and some basic descriptive statistics are provided in Annexes 1 and 2.

Note: For most countries and territories the Gallup World Poll aims to be representative of all residents, but for a small number of countries (e.g., Qatar and Bahrain) only Arab residents are included. In some countries (e.g. the United States) the sample is adults aged 18 and older.

15 Among others, Nobel Prize laureate Daniel Kahneman (Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University), Jeffrey D. Sachs (Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University) and Angus Deaton (Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of International Affairs, and Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School and Department of Economics, Princeton University).

3.1.1. The OECD picture

45. In recent years life evaluations among OECD members have tended to be highest (around 7.5 on a 0-10 scale) among Nordic countries, Switzerland, Canada, the Netherlands and Austria (OECD 2011;

OECD 2013b; OECD 2014). Mexico was also among the top ten scoring countries in 2012 and 2013. The lowest life evaluations in the OECD (6 and below on a 0-10 scale) are observed among Southern and Eastern European countries, including Greece, Portugal, Hungary, Estonia, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia and Italy. Turkey, Japan, and Korea also report scores below the OECD average. Among emerging economies often included in OECD analyses, life evaluations tend to be above the OECD average in Brazil, but below it in the Russian Federation – hereafter Russia, China, South Africa, India and Indonesia. The gap between the highest and lowest life evaluations in the OECD is generally around three scale points on a 0-10 scale.

46. OECD analyses have also used Gallup World Poll data to examine the extent to which countries exhibit a positive affect balance, measured by the proportion of people in a country who report experiencing more positive than negative feelings. This is measured through survey items in which people indicate, through a simple yes/no response format, whether they experienced the following feelings “a lot”

yesterday: enjoyment, well-restedness, smiling and laughing (summed to estimate positive affect), and sadness, anger and worry (summed to estimate negative affect). On this measure, Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Austria and Mexico exhibit scores towards the top end of the distribution, and Southern and Eastern European countries often cluster towards the bottom end (OECD 2011). Nonetheless, there are some countries in which affect scores and life evaluations produce very different rankings. For example, Japan, Korea and Poland move from scoring below average on life evaluations to above OECD-average on affect balance. In contrast, Canada, Switzerland, Israel, and Finland move from relatively high scores on life evaluations to markedly lower rankings on affect balance (see also Exton and Smith, forthcoming).

3.1.2. Worldwide patterns of subjective well-being

47. Figure 1 shows the distribution of life evaluations worldwide in 2012 (or the closest available year), with data drawn from the Gallup World Poll.¹⁶ Detailed findings for all of the maps that follow can be found in Annex 3. The gap between the lowest and highest average levels of life evaluation around the world is around five scale points on a 0-10 scale. While in the OECD, it is relatively rare to see life evaluation scores below the scale midpoint (5), the global picture indicates scores below the midpoint to be relatively common among the most political unstable and least economically developed countries and territories. The highest life evaluations are generally found in the Americas, Australia and New Zealand, and Northern Europe. The lowest life evaluations are typically found in central and sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia (including Afghanistan, India, and Bangladesh), and parts of the Middle East (Iraq, the Syrian Arab Republic – hereafter Syria, the Islamic Republic of Iran – hereafter Iran, and Yemen).

16 All maps were drawn with Stata’s user-written program “spmap”, and using Creative Commons geographical data provided by Bjorn Sandvik from thematicmapping.org.

Figure 1: Life evaluations: a global picture (2012 or closest year)

Source: Gallup World Poll

48. A clear global pattern is much less evident for affect balance (Figure 2). The proportion of people reporting a positive affect balance (i.e. more positive than negative feelings) yesterday generally ranges from 70% to nearly 90% within the OECD. In 2012, the place with the lowest proportion of positive affect balance was Syria (21%), followed by Iraq (41%), Armenia (45%), Iran (46%) and Sierra Leone (48%).

The highest were Kuwait, Trinidad and Tobago, and Paraguay (90%), followed by Uzbekistan (88%) and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (hereafter, Venezuela) (87%).

Figure 2: Affect balance yesterday (2012 or closest year)

Source: Gallup World Poll, authors’ calculations

49. When distinguishing positive and negative experiences (Figures 3 and 4 below), countries in the Americas, New Zealand and Australia, and parts of Northern Europe report some of the highest levels of positive emotion in the world. In contrast with life evaluations, several Asian countries also report high

positive affect, including China, Japan, Indonesia and Philippines. The likelihood of reporting strong positive affect varies substantially within Africa: several central African countries report some of the lowest levels of positive affect in the world, but there are pockets of more positive experience. Other regions with relatively low levels of positive affect include EECCA, as well as parts of the Middle East and central Asia (e.g. Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Afghanistan).

Figure 3: Enjoyment, feeling well-rested, and laughing/smiling around the world (2012 or closest year)

Source: Gallup World Poll

50. Negative affect mirrors positive affect to some extent, but with some exceptions (Figure 3). The likelihood of reporting strong negative emotions is highest in parts of the Middle East (particularly Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Iran) as well as parts of Southern and Eastern Europe, Latin America (especially Peru and the Plurinational State of Bolivia – hereafter Bolivia) and parts of South Asia (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia). Some regions and countries (e.g. the Americas; Philippines and Lao People’s Democratic Republic – hereafter Lao DR) report relatively high levels of both positive and negative affect, while other regions and countries (e.g. EECCA; Mongolia) report relatively low levels of both.

Figure 4: Sadness, anger and worry around the world (2012 or closest year)

Source: Gallup World Poll