posts_gdocs: 10NGR-wbXo9gPzlop90tH0poslBylWwZkYSySO1HPqF8
Data license: CC-BY
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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"text": "Is \u2018life satisfaction\u2019 the same as \u2018happiness\u2019?",
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"text": "Can \u2018happiness\u2019 and \u2018life satisfaction\u2019 really be measured?",
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"text": "The data gives the national average of survey responses to the 'Cantril Ladder' question, which asks respondents to evaluate their life on a scale from 0 to 10.",
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"text": " \u201cPlease imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 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?\u201d.",
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"text": "In practice, social scientists tend to rely on questions inquiring directly about happiness, or on questions inquiring about life satisfaction. The former tend to measure the experiential or emotional aspects of well-being (e.g. \u201cI feel very happy\u201d), while the latter tend to measure the evaluative or cognitive aspects of well-being (e.g. \u201cI think I lead a very positive life\u201d).",
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"text": "The chart below plots a measure of average happiness against a measure of average life satisfaction.",
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"text": "Along the X-axis we show data from the World Value Survey, which asks directly about happiness: \u201cTaking all things together, would you say you are (i) Very happy, (ii) Rather happy, (iii) Not very happy, (iv) Not at all happy, (v) Don\u2019t know.\u201d Shown is the share of respondents who say they are \u2018very happy\u2019 or \u2018rather happy\u2019.",
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"text": "\u201cPlease imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 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?",
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"text": "As the visualization shows, these two measures are clearly closely related (countries that score high in one measure also tend to score high in the other), yet they are not identical (there is substantial dispersion, with many countries sharing the same score in one variable but diverging in the other).",
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"text": "The differences in responses to questions inquiring about life satisfaction and happiness are consistent with the idea that subjective well-being has two sides: an experiential or emotional side, and an evaluative or cognitive side. Of course, the limits between emotional and cognitive aspects of well-being are blurred in our minds; so in practice both kinds of questions measure both aspects to some degree. Indeed, social scientists often construct \u2018subjective well-being indexes\u2019 where they simply average out results from various types of questions.",
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"text": "Experimental psychologists have also shown that self reports of well-being from surveys turn out to correlate with activity in the parts of the brain associated with pleasure and satisfaction. And various surveys have confirmed that people who say they are happy also tend to sleep better and express positive emotions verbally more frequently.",
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"text": "The following table, adapted from ",
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"text": "The World Happiness Report is a publication of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, powered by the Gallup World Poll data. The World Happiness Report reflects a worldwide demand for more attention to happiness and well-being as criteria for government policy. It reviews the state of happiness in the world today and shows how the science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness.",
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"text": "Life evaluations from the Gallup World Poll provide the basis for the annual happiness rankings. They are based on answers to the main life evaluation question. The Cantril ladder asks respondents to think of a ladder, with the best possible life for them being a 10 and the worst possible life being a 0. They are then asked to rate their own current lives on that 0 to 10 scale. The rankings are from nationally representative samples over three years.",
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1 | 2023-04-27 10:14:03 | 2023-06-16 14:40:26 | 2023-12-28 16:31:02 | unlisted | ANeT5PRQwsLrEz5gX57RP-eTvUNHdVHMjNKFllzIccnbhWilNFcS3IJ01GeNna0BnQ_Z5h5NS3-cY1Xk8iVilA | # keyInfoText * The data gives the national average of survey responses to the 'Cantril Ladder' question, which asks respondents to evaluate their life on a scale from 0 to 10. * The exact wording of the question is the following:_ “Please imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 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?”._ * The data is produced as part of the World Happiness Report, based on several rounds of Gallup World Poll surveys. * All figures are produced by the source using the Gallup survey weights to make the estimates representative at the national level. * The number of people and countries surveyed varies year to year, but typically more than 100,000 people in 130 countries participate in the Gallup World Poll each year. # descriptionFromSource # faqs ### Is ‘life satisfaction’ the same as ‘happiness’? The most natural way to attempt to measure subjective well-being is to ask people what they think and feel. Indeed, this is the most common approach. In practice, social scientists tend to rely on questions inquiring directly about happiness, or on questions inquiring about life satisfaction. The former tend to measure the experiential or emotional aspects of well-being (e.g. “I feel very happy”), while the latter tend to measure the evaluative or cognitive aspects of well-being (e.g. “I think I lead a very positive life”). The chart below plots a measure of average happiness against a measure of average life satisfaction. Along the X-axis we show data from the World Value Survey, which asks directly about happiness: “Taking all things together, would you say you are (i) Very happy, (ii) Rather happy, (iii) Not very happy, (iv) Not at all happy, (v) Don’t know.” Shown is the share of respondents who say they are ‘very happy’ or ‘rather happy’. On the Y-axis is data from the Gallup World Poll, which uses the Cantril Ladder question and asks respondents to evaluate their life: _“Please imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 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?_” Shown is the average reported score. As the visualization shows, these two measures are clearly closely related (countries that score high in one measure also tend to score high in the other), yet they are not identical (there is substantial dispersion, with many countries sharing the same score in one variable but diverging in the other). The differences in responses to questions inquiring about life satisfaction and happiness are consistent with the idea that subjective well-being has two sides: an experiential or emotional side, and an evaluative or cognitive side. Of course, the limits between emotional and cognitive aspects of well-being are blurred in our minds; so in practice both kinds of questions measure both aspects to some degree. Indeed, social scientists often construct ‘subjective well-being indexes’ where they simply average out results from various types of questions. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/Happiness-WVS-vs-Gallup"/> ### Can ‘happiness’ and ‘life satisfaction’ really be measured? One way to gauge whether self-reports provide a valid measure of happiness or life satisfaction is to see how well they correlate with things that typically associate with contentment. Such a correlation has been found, for example, with [smiling and laughing](https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2017/04/Life-Satisfaction-vs-Laugh-Gallup.png). Experimental psychologists have also shown that self reports of well-being from surveys turn out to correlate with activity in the parts of the brain associated with pleasure and satisfaction. And various surveys have confirmed that people who say they are happy also tend to sleep better and express positive emotions verbally more frequently. The following table, adapted from [Kahneman and Krueger (2006)](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/089533006776526030), provides a list of the variables that researchers have found to be related to self-reported happiness and life satisfaction. The main conclusion from the evidence is that survey-based measures of happiness and life satisfaction do provide a reasonably consistent and reliable picture of subjective well-being. <Image filename="correlates-of-high-life-satisfaction-and-happiness-Kahneman-and-Krueger-2006.png" alt=""/> # variableProcessingInfo # sourceDescription1 _The World Happiness Report is a publication of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, powered by the Gallup World Poll data. The World Happiness Report reflects a worldwide demand for more attention to happiness and well-being as criteria for government policy. It reviews the state of happiness in the world today and shows how the science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness._ _Life evaluations from the Gallup World Poll provide the basis for the annual happiness rankings. They are based on answers to the main life evaluation question. The Cantril ladder asks respondents to think of a ladder, with the best possible life for them being a 10 and the worst possible life being a 0. They are then asked to rate their own current lives on that 0 to 10 scale. The rankings are from nationally representative samples over three years._ [Text from [World Happiness Report](https://worldhappiness.report/about/) website] | Data pages texts – self-reported life satisfaction | World Happiness Report |