The Global Flourishing Study, run by Gallup with researchers at Harvard and Baylor, scores people on a 0-to-10 index that averages 10 questions about happiness, health, meaning, character and relationships. When I set each country's average against its GDP per person from the World Bank, 8 of the 10 richest countries ranked in the bottom half of the 22.
Indonesia ranked first at 8.47, with GDP per person of about $13,900. The U.S. ranked 15th at 7.18, even though it produces more than five times as much per person, about $74,400. Japan finished last at 5.93, 2.54 points below Indonesia and 0.66 below Turkey, the next lowest.
[Samuel: one line on why this caught your eye, e.g. what you see in the Vail Valley or in your students.]
How strong is the pattern?
It's clear but loose. The 10 countries with GDP per person under $25,000 averaged 7.79, and the 10 above $40,000 averaged 7.13, a gap of 0.66 points. Ranked by wealth and by flourishing, the two lists have a correlation of −0.57, meaning richer countries tend to score lower but with plenty of exceptions. Israel ranked fourth at 8.00 with GDP per person of about $47,700, and Poland tied for eighth at 7.63, ahead of every Western European country in the study.
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Add money worries and the gap shrinks
The study also publishes a version of the index with two more questions, about worrying over monthly expenses and over safety, food or housing. People in richer countries worry less about both, so that version narrows the gap. Israel moves to second at 7.87, Poland to fifth at 7.55 and the U.S. up to 12th at 7.11, while Indonesia stays first and Japan last. On that version the correlation with wealth falls to −0.28, too weak to rule out chance with only 22 countries.
What do richer countries score lower on?
Tyler VanderWeele, who directs Harvard's Human Flourishing Program, told Euronews that richer countries don't score as high on meaning, relationships or pro-social character. Relationships stand out in Japan, where 32.8% of adults said there's no one they feel very close to, more than twice the U.S. share. A separate 22-country “report card” paper published in August found that how people rate their own lives and how their countries score on 34 objective national measures line up only weakly, with a correlation of 0.15 across countries.
What the data can't tell us
These are averages from one round of surveys, so they show that richer countries tend to score lower, not that money lowers anyone's score. Researchers have long noted that people in some countries, Japan among them, avoid the top of rating scales, which would pull an average down without anyone feeling worse. The 22 countries cover about 64% of the world's population but weren't chosen at random. The study's third wave will be presented on Dec. 2, and it should show whether the ranking holds from year to year.
Notes and calculations
Richest 10 (GDP per person above $40,000): U.S., Hong Kong, Germany, Sweden, Australia, Britain, Israel, Japan, Spain and Poland. Their ranks: 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 4, 22, 14 and 9 (tied). Eight are 12th or lower.
U.S. vs. Indonesia GDP per person: $74,352 divided by $13,890 is about 5.4.
Japan vs. Indonesia GDP per person: $47,387 divided by $13,890 is about 3.4.
Group averages: under $25,000 (Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania) 7.79; above $40,000 7.13. Simple averages of country scores, not weighted by population.
Correlations are Spearman rank correlations across the 22 countries: −0.57 for the main index, −0.28 for the index with financial questions (p = 0.13).
How we counted: flourishing scores are the published Wave 1 country means of the Global Flourishing Study's composite index without financial indicators (10 items) and with them (12 items), collected April 2022 to December 2023. We reproduced each from the public data file to within 0.02 points. GDP per person is the World Bank's GDP per capita, PPP (constant 2021 international dollars), for 2023, retrieved Nov. 2, 2026. Sources: Global Flourishing Study, Waves 1 and 2 open data (Center for Open Science); VanderWeele et al., “The Global Flourishing Study: Study Profile and Initial Results on Flourishing,” Nature Mental Health, April 30, 2025; World Bank, NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD; “A comparative report card,” Discover Global Society, Aug. 22, 2026; Euronews, April 30, 2025.