There's More to Life than Happiness

Our world is obsessed with happiness. Companies offer products promising it, cultural narratives promote it (“choose happiness”) and governments are measuring it.

But happiness is limited. It is a feeling and, as such, it comes and goes.

Human flourishing, by contrast, encompasses happiness but also includes meaning and purpose, physical and mental health, virtue, strong relationships, and financial/material stability. Flourishing reflects not just how someone feels, but how fully their life is going across multiple dimensions.

As we look to optimize our lives – increasingly long ones in many cases – happiness may be an insufficient success metric. We are wiser to focus on flourishing.

Flourishing Varies by Place

According to the newly released Global Flourishing Study (GFS) by Gallup, Baylor University, Harvard University and the Center for Open Science, some countries promote human flourishing better than others. The five-year, longitudinal study tracks over 200,000 people from 23 countries (covering 64% of the world’s population). The study measures flourishing across six core domains: (1) happiness and life satisfaction, (2) mental and physical health, (3) meaning and purpose, (4) character and virtue, (5) close social relationships, and (6) financial and material stability.

The study found that Indonesia, Mexico and Philippines with the highest scores; Japan, Turkey and UK ranked the lowest. The U.S. ranked a middling 12 out of 22.

Mexico scores well due to strong social and family bonds, spiritual and religious engagement and cultural emphasis on meaning and purpose. Mexican culture places a significant emphasis on close-knit family structures and community relationships. These robust social connections contribute to higher scores in domains such as close social relationships and character and virtue. Regular participation in religious services is common in Mexico, which correlates with higher levels of meaning, purpose, and overall well-being. Despite economic challenges, many Mexicans report a strong sense of life purpose and meaning. This cultural orientation towards finding value in daily life and communal activities enhances overall flourishing.

Japan’s struggles, according to the report, are primarily based on limited social connections, mental health challenges and low religious engagement. Japanese respondents reported a lack of close relationships, which significantly impacts overall well-being. This lack of social connectedness has contributed to significant mental health issues, including high suicide rates and the phenomenon of "hikikomori" (acute social withdrawal). Further, Japan has one of the lowest levels of religious service attendance among the surveyed countries, potentially impacting the sense of community and purpose among its citizens.

In the case of the U.S., high measures of financial and material stability are offset by lower scores in mental and physical health, meaning and purpose and close social relationships. Some of the struggles are particularly felt among young people.

Does Flourishing Improve with Age? It Depends.

For years, there has been talk about the U-shaped happiness curve. The concept is that young people have a certain high level of happiness that then dips in middle age and rebounds in the second half of life. This general arc has been shown to hold true globally.

However, in the case of human flourishing, no global pattern seems to emerge. A U-shape is true for countries like China and Japan. Getting older gets worse in countries like Kenya and Poland. Flourishing improves with age in the U.S. and Brazil.

Money isn’t Everything, But…

The study found that financial and material stability was the strongest predictor of human flourishing across all 23 countries studied. Financial and material stability foundational to human flourishing because it directly affects people’s ability to meet basic needs, manage stress, and focus on higher-order aspects of well-being such as purpose, relationships, and virtue.

When people worry about housing, food, or monthly bills, it creates ongoing psychological and physical stress, which undermines both mental and physical health—key domains of flourishing. Financial stability offers the freedom to make long-term plans, pursue meaningful goals, and delay gratification—traits associated with personal growth and character development.

Though the GFS treats financial and material stability as a separate domain, its findings show it has a powerful association with the other five domains. That is, while money doesn’t guarantee flourishing, insecurity almost always hinders it.

Appreciate the Impact of Place

Countries have characteristics that influence human flourishing but we don’t really live in a country – we live in microplaces within countries. That’s to say that just because Japan scores poorly doesn’t mean that every place within Japan scores poorly in the same way that every place in Mexico doesn’t guarantee a high human flourishing score (a major understatement).

Where we live shapes not just our happiness but our ability to flourish. While happiness may dominate the headlines and ads around us, we would be wise to take a moment to consider the dimensions of flourishing and see how it relates to our lives in our current place. If we don’t, we may be limiting what our increasingly long lives could become.

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