Global study on human flourishing

Recently a huge new research project on human flourishing was launched. The study is a result of a new collaboration between some universities (including Harvard) and organisations like Gallup and the Center for Open Science, and includes around 200.000 people from 22 countries. 

The study asks people about a big range of flourishing factors, like happiness and life satisfaction, physical and mental health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships, and financial and material stability. It also added questions about childhood and family relationships, education, religious practice and marital status. For now, the yearly study is planned to run for 5 years with the first wave of studies just being published. Some of the most interesting findings so far:

• The happiness curve is collapsing. For decades, research showed that the way people experienced happiness across their lifetimes looked like a U-shaped curve; high when they were young, then dipped in midlife, only to rise again as they grew old. But the study suggests that young adults aren’t as happy as they used to be, and the U-shaped curve is starting to flatten.

• The countries with the highest predicted flourishing came as a surprise. The countries researchers think scored highest in predictors for flourishing are Indonesia, Israel, the Philippines, and Mexico, respectively. Compared to the lowest three: United Kingdom, Turkey, and Japan. These results strongly differ from the World Happiness Report, which consistently ranks Nordic countries at the top.

• Traditional institutions improve flourishing. Looking at individual factors that predict the most flourishing, it was interesting to see that marriage and religious attendance contribute to relatively big boosts in flourishing. With religious attendance, the frequency also made a difference, the more often adults (and children) attended church, the more flourishing they experienced. Important sidenote: this is a  correlation and does not prove an isolated cause and effect. While people who attend religious services more often tend to flourish more, we cannot say for certain from this data alone that attending church is the sole or direct cause of increased flourishing. There may be other contributing factors, and the relationship is likely complex and multi-directional.

Starting from the next wave, it will be even more interesting to see how the waves compare to each other and which direction the world is moving. We will keep you posted.