The first wave of findings from Harvard Chan School’s Global Flourishing Study reveals trends in who’s living well, and where, and why.
In 2017, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Tyler VanderWeele put forth a new way to define and quantify wellbeing. He called it flourishing, defining it as “a state in which all aspects of a person’s life are good.” Those aspects, VanderWeele wrote, included happiness and life satisfaction, physical and mental health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and close social relationships. Measuring them all together—considering wellbeing in a multidimensional way, without necessarily prioritizing any aspect over another—would most accurately reveal how humans are faring, where lives are best lived, and why.
Eight years later, VanderWeele has done just that with the release of the Global Flourishing Study (GFS). The study, carried out by the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard, the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University, Gallup, and the Center for Open Science, measured flourishing among more than 200,000 people in 22 geographically and culturally diverse countries on all six populated continents. Each country’s pool of study participants was nationally representative, reflecting more than half of the global population.
The GFS is one of the most comprehensive studies of human wellbeing ever conducted. The researchers released the first results in a series of papers published across Nature journals on April 30. Nature Mental Health published the study’s flagship paper.
In a commentary in Nature from VanderWeele, John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology and director of the Human Flourishing Program, and his co-principal investigator, Byron Johnson, director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor, the two shared why they believe it’s necessary to measure human wellbeing.
“Greater insights into what makes people happy, secure, and hopeful will make for a better world,” they wrote.
Wealth doesn’t equal happiness
The first wave of GFS results covers data collected in 2022 and 2023. Participants responded to more than 100 statements and questions reflective of the components of flourishing, plus financial and material stability, such as:
- In general, how happy or unhappy do you usually feel?
- In general, how would you rate your physical health?
- I understand my purpose in life.
- I always act to promote good in all circumstances, even in difficult and challenging situations.
- My relationships are as satisfying as I would want them to be.
- How often do you worry about being able to meet normal monthly living expenses?
The researchers then reported mean flourishing scores across countries and demographics including age, gender, education, marital status, employment, religious affiliation and service attendance, immigration status, and race/ethnicity.
The study found that Indonesia’s flourishing score was highest; Japan’s was lowest. Mexico, the Philippines, and Israel had the other high scores; Turkey was second lowest. The U.S. and Sweden—a country that consistently ranks as one of the world’s happiest countries when judged only by life evaluation—ranked in the middle.
The researchers observed that across the 22 countries studied, overall national composite flourishing surprisingly decreased slightly as GDP per capita increased. With the exception of Israel and Hong Kong, no high-income nations ranked in the top half of the distribution for composite flourishing. While high-income nations scored higher financial security and overall life evaluation, middle income nations scored higher on meaning and purpose, on pro-social character, and on close social relationships.
Niles Singer / Harvard Staff Photographer
VanderWeele and Johnson reflected on these findings in an April 30 op-ed in The New York Times. “Most of the countries that reported high overall composite flourishing may not have been rich in economic terms, but they tended to be rich in friendships, marriages and community involvement—especially involvement in religious communities,” they wrote. “To be clear: Being poor is not desirable, and we should strive to improve material conditions. But … We need to figure out how to foster economic development without compromising meaning, purpose and relationships.”
“Might it even be possible for Sweden to ‘get to Indonesia’— in terms of restoring relationships and communities, a sense of meaning in life and a connection to the sacred—without sacrificing its hard-won health, wealth and stability?” they added.
‘Young people are struggling’
The study’s other major finding was about flourishing across age groups. On average across countries, the researchers observed that flourishing scores stayed consistent from ages 18-49, and only began to rise thereafter. From age 50, flourishing increased with each decade of age, with people 80 and older scoring highest.
Research on wellbeing from previous decades had shown life satisfaction as a U-shaped curve across the lifespan, with youth and seniors reporting the highest levels and those in middle age reporting the lowest levels.
In the GFS study, some countries—India, Egypt, Kenya, and Japan—still saw somewhat more traditional U-shaped curves in their flourishing scores across the lifespan. However, many countries did not, including the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and Brazil, which led the global trend, suggesting young people reporting lower wellbeing than they used to.
“Young people are struggling,” VanderWeele said.
He and his co-authors posited some potential drivers of this trend, including a youth mental health crisis and challenging social and economic conditions. Further research may confirm these reasons and reveal others.
Greater insights into what makes people happy, secure, and hopeful will make for a better world.
Tyler VanderWeele and Byron Johnson, co-principal investigators of the Global Flourishing Study
More findings ahead
Other notable findings included insights on the impacts of gender, marriage, education, and religion on flourishing. The study found that:
- Men and women had similar flourishing scores; those who didn’t identify with either gender had lower scores
- Married people had significantly higher flourishing scores than their single and separated or divorced counterparts, and slightly higher scores than their counterparts in domestic partnerships (though this varied by country—in India and Tanzania, single individuals had higher scores)
- Flourishing scores increase slightly with added years of education (though in Hong Kong and Australia, the pattern was reversed)
- Flourishing scores increase significantly with religious service attendance, even in the most secular countries
More findings will emerge through 2027, as the GFS continues to annually survey participants and to add more. Last year, people from mainland China joined the study, bringing the total number of participants to more than 207,000.
While the study is among the most extensive of its kind, the researchers noted its limitations. Lower middle-income countries were included, but there were no low-income countries, and it may be difficult to compare countries to one another given that participants were surveyed at different times, in different languages, and across vastly different cultural, political, and economic contexts.
The latter reason is why, according to VanderWeele, countries should “start their own efforts at flourishing data collection and tracking, focused upon each specific culture and context, and their own priorities.”
“It’s the only way we will truly develop a public health approach to wellbeing,” he said.
In line with this recommendation, the researchers have made all GFS data free and open to the public in partnership with the Center for Open Science. The first two waves of data are available online.
“Many groups will publish additional research using our data,” VanderWeele said. “This, in combination with GFS’ unique breadth, constitutes a big step forward for wellbeing research.” Meanwhile, GFS resources and measure are available to individuals who want to assess and improve their own wellbeing. VanderWeele suggests that a simple place to begin is through the GFS’ 12 core flourishing questions.
