What does it mean to live a good life? For centuries, philosophers, scientists and people from different cultures have tried to answer this question. Every tradition has a different view, but everyone agrees: a good life is more than just feeling good - it is about being complete.
Recently, researchers have focused on the idea of thriving, not just as happiness or success, but a multidimensional state involving positive emotions, participation, relationships, meaning and achievement—an idea that can be traced back to Aristotle’s concept of “Eudaimonia” but has been redefined in the literature on welfare science.
Thriving is not only a sense of happiness, but also your inner feelings. It's about your whole life being good, including the people around you and the place you live. Things like your home, your community, your school or workplace, and your friends are important.
We are a group of psychologists, social scientists and epidemiologists who are contributors to an international collaboration called Global Prosperity Research. The purpose of the project is simple: to find cross-cultural models of human prosperity.
Are people in some countries thriving more than others? What makes a person's well-being different? Can people do something to improve their lives? Over time, understanding these trends can help shape policies and programs that improve the thriving development of humanity around the world.
What are the focus of booming research?
The global booming study is a five-year annual survey of more than 200,000 participants from 22 countries, using nationally representative sampling to understand health and well-being. Our team includes over 40 researchers across different disciplines, cultures and institutions.
With the help of Gallup Inc., we asked people about their lives, happiness, health, childhood experiences, and how they feel about their financial situation.
This study focuses on six dimensions of thriving life:
Happiness and life satisfaction: The feeling of life that satisfying and satisfied people have.
Physical and mental health: People's sense of health in their body and mind.
Meaning and purpose: Whether people think their lives are important and move in a clear direction.
Roles and virtues: How people take action to promote goodness even in difficult situations.
Close social relations: How satisfied people are with their friendship and family relationships.
Financial and material stability: Whether people feel safe with their basic needs, including food, housing and money.
We attempted to quantify the performance of participants on these dimensions using a scale from 0 to 10. In addition to using the safe and prosperous measures in Harvard’s Human Prosperity Program, we offer other questions to explore other factors that influence someone’s thriving.
For example, we assessed happiness through questions about optimism, peace and life balance. We measure health by asking about pain, depression, and exercise. We measure relationships by questions about trust, loneliness, and support.
Who is prospering and why?
Our first wave of results shows that some countries and a group of people perform better than others.
We are surprised that in many countries, young people are not as good as older people. Earlier studies have shown that happiness follows the U-shaped line throughout the life cycle, with the lowest point in middle age. Our new results show that young people today face increasing mental health challenges, financial insecurity and loss of meaning, which undermine the traditional U-shaped well-being curve.
Married people usually report more support, better relationships and meaning in life.
People who work for themselves or others (whether they are themselves or others) are also safer and happier than those seeking work.
People who serve religiously once a week or more often report in all areas of prosperity, especially happiness, meaning and relationships. This discovery is the case in almost every country, even in secular discoveries such as Sweden.
It seems that religious communities provide what religious psychologists call four Bs: belonging; combining in the form of spiritual connection; acts of fostering character and virtue through practices and norms taught in religious communities; and belief in the form of embracing hope, forgiveness and shared spiritual beliefs.
But some people who participate in religious services will also report more pain or pain. This correlation may be because religious groups often provide support during difficult times and frequent attendees may be more careful or more likely to suffer from pain, grief, or illness.
Your early days shape the way you live later. But even if life is always challenging, it doesn’t have to stay that way. Some people with childhood difficulties experienced abuse or poverty and later discovered the meaning and purpose of adults. In some countries, including the United States and Argentina, the hardships of childhood seem to establish resilience and purpose as adulthood.
Globally, men and women report similar levels of prosperity. But in some countries, there are big differences. For example, women in Japan reported higher scores than men, while in Brazil, men reported better performance than women.
Where do people thrive?
Some countries perform better than others in terms of prosperity.
Indonesia is booming. People there scored high in many areas, including meaning, purpose, relationships and personality. Indonesia was one of the highest scorers throughout the study.
Mexico and the Philippines also showed strong results. Although these countries have less money than others, strong family relationships, spiritual life and community support have been reported.
Japan and Türkiye reported lower scores. Japan's economy is strong, but people there report lower happiness and weaker social connections. Long working hours and stress may be part of the reason. In Türkiye, political and financial challenges can hurt people’s sense of trust and security.
A surprising result is that wealthy countries, including the United States and Sweden, did not flourish as much as others. They performed well in terms of financial stability, but scored low on meaning and relationships. Having more money doesn’t always mean people are doing better in their lives.
In fact, countries with higher incomes often report lower meaning and purpose. Meanwhile, countries with higher fertility rates often report more meaning in their lives. These findings suggest trade-offs can be weighed. Economic progress may improve certain things, but weaken others.
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The overall situation
Research that flourishes globally helps us see that people around the world need many of the same basic things: stay happy, healthy, connected and safe. But different countries have achieved these goals in different ways. There is no one single answer for prosperity. The meaning of thriving can range from one place to another to another.
One challenge in Global Prosperity Research is that it uses the same problem in all 22 countries. This method is called the ETET method and helps us compare cross-cultural results. But this may miss the nuances of prosperity and local implications. What brings happiness or purpose in a country or environment may not mean the same thing.
We believe this research is a starting point. It opens the door to more EMIC research – research on issues and ideas that use values, languages and daily life that are suitable for a particular culture and society. Researchers can build on the findings of this study to expand how we understand and measure prosperity around the world.