To determine where people are flourishing, researchers at Harvard and Baylor universities analyzed data collected by Gallup and survey responses from more than 200,000 people in 22 countries over five years. The flourishing index takes into account residents’ happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and close social relationships.
Indonesia, a middle-income country, topped the list with the highest composite flourishing score, followed by Israel, the Philippines, and Mexico.
“While many developed nations report comparatively higher levels of financial security and life evaluation, these same nations are not flourishing in other ways, often reporting lower meaning, pro-sociality, and relationship quality,” the researchers write.
“While the terms ‘flourishing’ and ‘well-being’ are often used interchangeably, flourishing arguably has a connotation of also having the environment itself being conducive to growth and being a part of one’s flourishing,” the authors explain. They found that a country’s wealth factors less into residents’ perception of flourishing.
“The claim being made here is not a causal assertion about gross domestic product lowering meaning,” the authors write. “Rather, the desired outcome of a society is presumably one with both high levels of economic development and high levels of meaning, and the question is then how to attain this.”
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