A new kind of inequality is on the rise: Happiness’ haves and have nots

Every year, Gallup interviews people in over 140 countries to ask them how their lives are going. The following conversation — translated into English — is an exchange between a Vietnamese interviewer and a female shoe factory worker in Ho Chi Minh City.

Interviewer: Did you feel well-rested yesterday?

Woman:  No. I am working 12 hours a day at the factory, but I still don’t have enough money.

Interviewer: Were you treated with respect all day yesterday?

Woman:  Don’t know. I will get into fights if I don’t finish my target.

Interviewer: Did you smile and laugh a lot all day yesterday?

Woman:  [Silence]

Interviewer: Sis, are you still there?

Woman:  [Struggles to answer]

Interviewer: You can talk to me if you have anything to share.

Woman:  [Crying] No one ever asks me whether I’m happy or not, whether I’m well or sick.

This worker is struggling. You can feel her unhappiness. But how many people in the world feel just like her? In other words, how much unhappiness is there in the world?

If there was a definitive answer to that question, would leaders pay attention to it?

They sure pay attention when the economy contracts. If the stock market collapses, it makes headlines everywhere. And all leaders worry when unemployment increases. But what about when anger rises? Or stress? Or sadness? Do they even know it happened?

Imagine you are in a room with the leaders of the G-20: the president of the United States, the prime minister of India, the chancellor of Germany, the president of China, the king of Saudi Arabia, and the leaders of the other 15 largest economies in the world. You ask them: “What indicators do you follow most closely?”

All leaders use indicators to measure progress. For example, if you asked CEOs this question, they would probably say revenue growth or share price. With world leaders, it’s harder to know. Would they say GDP? Unemployment? The poverty rate? Maybe the Saudi king would say oil prices.

I am not entirely sure what their answer would be, but I know what they would not say. None of them would say happiness.

As a result, none of them know just how much unhappiness there is in the world today. And that is concerning because unhappiness is now at a record high. According to Gallup, people feel more anger, sadness, pain, worry, and stress than ever before.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “I didn’t need data to know that. The pandemic made everyone miserable. Why is that surprising?”

COVID-19 was bad for everyone, but we cannot blame the rise of unhappiness on the pandemic alone. Global misery was rising well before the pandemic. In fact, unhappiness has been steadily climbing for a decade — and its rise has been in the blind spot of almost every world leader.

Experts know how to count almost everything: CO2 emissions, the size of urban slum populations, the contribution tourism makes to every country’s economy, and even the number of trees in the Sahara desert. But while experts seem to count almost everything, they don’t systematically measure how people feel.

Dear 7.7 Billion World Citizens, How Are Your Lives Going?

In 2006, Gallup began conducting global research on subjective wellbeing, which is used interchangeably with “happiness.” The goal of the research was to definitively report — by country — how people’s lives were going from their perspective. Was the world getting more stressed? Were people more hopeful? Were they getting angrier?

Thousands of interviewers have now sat with people in their homes or called them and asked them about their lives — just like the Vietnamese worker above. This work now represents more than 98% of the world’s population and, as of this writing, includes over 5 million interviews.

It is remarkable how open people are about sharing their sadness, their pain, or their anger. But it’s also concerning that so many more people are sharing these negative emotions with us.

But why? Why are so many more people feeling this way?

The answer has to do with an inequality the world is not familiar with. Leaders understand income inequality — the growing divide between the financial haves and have-nots. What they are not familiar with is the growing divide between the haves and have-nots of a great life. This is called wellbeing inequality.

At the beginning of every wellbeing survey, we ask people to tell us how good of a life they have. Here is the question verbatim:

Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?

When we first asked the world this question in 2006, 3.4% of people told Gallup their lives were a 10 — the best possible life. And only 1.6% said their lives were a zero — the worst possible life.

After 15 years of tracking, those numbers have shifted significantly. The number of people living their best lives has more than doubled (to 7.4%), while the number people living their worst lives has more than quadrupled (to 7.6%). (See References for trend: Best and Worst Life Ratings.)

But it gets worse.

If you isolate the 20% of people globally who rate their lives the best and compare them to the 20% of people who rate their lives the worst, you find just how unequal the world is becoming in terms of wellbeing and happiness.

In 2006, the 20% of the world who rated their lives the best had an average life rating of 8.3. The 20% who rated their lives the worst had an average life rating of 2.5.

Now look at 2021. The 20% who rated their lives the best had an average life rating of 8.9, and the 20% who rated their lives the worst had an average life rating of 1.2. The gap in those life ratings is now 7.7 points — the highest in the history of Gallup’s tracking. The top 20% of the world could hardly be doing better, and the bottom 20% could hardly be doing worse.

You might think that income inequality explains wellbeing inequality and therefore rising unhappiness. That is certainly part of it. But a great life is more than just money. After studying the 20% of people who report having a great life, Gallup finds they have five things in common: They are fulfilled by their work, have little financial stress, live in great communities, have good physical health, and have loved ones they can turn to for help.

The 20% of people who rate their lives the worst have very little of any of those things. They don’t have a quality job, their income is not enough to get by, they live in broken communities, they are hungry or malnourished, and they don’t have anyone in their life they can count on for help. And the 20% who rate their lives this low are getting sadder, more stressed, and angrier than ever before.

One of our earliest advisers on this work was Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. He told us something over 15 years ago that he recently repeated on a podcast: “… we speak of happiness, the dimension is labeled by its positive pole. And that’s very unfortunate because actually increasing happiness and reducing misery are very different things.” He also said, “… I would not focus on the positive end. I would focus on the negative end, and I would say it is a responsibility of society to try to reduce misery.”

The following essay is an adapted excerpt of "Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It" By Jon Clifton (September 13, Gallup Press)