LONDON — Worldwide, people in more countries are living better lives and expressing more hope for the future than they have in years.
In 2024, a median of 33% of adults across 142 countries rated their lives well enough to be classified as “thriving,” continuing a trend of steady improvements in life evaluation going back more than a decade.
Gallup’s Life Evaluation Index, based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale, asks people to rate their current and future lives on a ladder from 0 (worst) to 10 (best). Those scoring 7+ for the present and 8+ for five years ahead are "thriving," while those rating both 4 or below are "suffering." Everyone else is "struggling."
Understanding how people evaluate their own lives is an important measure of human progress, unlike traditional economic metrics like GDP, which, while related to living standards, fail to capture whether people are living well.
The global median for thriving across countries — that is, the thriving rate of the country at the midpoint of all countries, ranked from high to low in thriving, is 33%. This differs somewhat from the population-weighted average of global residents who are thriving (28%), which gives more weight to countries with larger populations like China and India.
Even so, the trajectory of the population-weighted global average over the past decade and a half tracks the global median fairly closely and remains significantly higher than was recorded before the COVID-19 pandemic (see Survey Methods for more details).
Rates of thriving have risen consistently across demographics. Men and women, young and old, all now rate their lives better than they did in the past. As thriving has increased, rates of suffering have inched downward. In 2024, a median of 7% globally were classed as suffering in life, matching the lowest point on record going back to 2007, and significantly lower than a decade ago (12% in 2014).
Both Current and Future Life Evaluations See Improvements Globally
Both elements of life evaluation — current and future life ratings — have improved over time. In 2024, the global median score for the present day was 5.9 out of 10, which is on par with 2022 and 2023, but higher than most other points on the long-term trend.
The median 2024 future life rating was 7.2 out of 10, roughly in line with the 2020 peak during the COVID-19 pandemic (7.3), when the world was looking to the future with more optimism relative to the challenging circumstances of the time. Together, these positive life evaluations combined to push overall levels of thriving higher in 2024.
Wellbeing Falls in Northern America, Western Europe and Australia and New Zealand, Rises in Most Other Regions
The steady rise in wellbeing has not been evenly distributed around the world. In Australia and New Zealand (49% thriving in 2024), Northern America (49%) and Western Europe (42%) — all home to several advanced economies and liberal democracies — wellbeing has dipped gradually over time, and in 2024, remained under 50%. As the World Happiness Report finds, many of these declines have been driven by young people.
The global increase is attributed to increased wellbeing in most other regions, which more than offset the declines elsewhere. Latin America and the Caribbean (45%), East and South Europe (37%), East (34%) and Southeast Asia (32%) and Post-Soviet Eurasia (33%) have all seen steady increases in thriving over time.
The Middle East and North Africa (17%) and sub-Saharan Africa (15%) have seen more modest increases from lower starting points, while South Asia (11%) is the only region to show no change since 2007.
Over the past decade, the percentage thriving has increased by 20 points or more in 12 countries, while there has been an equivalent decline in only one, Switzerland (-22 percentage points). Most of the countries with improved thriving rates are located across Eastern and Southern Europe, including Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Lithuania, Armenia, Estonia and Hungary.
What Lies Behind the Global Rise in Thriving?
The steady global increase in thriving, a subjective measure of wellbeing, parallels external indicators of human progress such as the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI, which measures national life expectancy, years of schooling and living standards, has also increased steadily over the same period.
However, the countries with the greatest gains in HDI over the past decade have not always experienced the largest increases in subjective wellbeing. Several Gallup measures of global public opinion offer some clues as to what other factors may be spurring the increase in global thriving.
For instance, a median of 81% globally are now satisfied with their personal freedoms, a figure that has gradually increased over time. Perceptions of child wellbeing have also improved, with a record 75% in 2024 saying their country is a good place for children to learn and grow.
Meanwhile, economic optimism has gradually rebounded since the global financial crisis in 2007 and 2008. In 2024, a median of 42% of adults were optimistic about their local economies getting better, while 49% felt the same about their living standards. Both remain slightly below precrash levels but are much improved from the lows that followed.
These trends reflect how people feel about various aspects of their lives and how they anticipate the future. Notably, national increases over the past decade in people’s economic optimism, their satisfaction with personal freedom and their perceptions of children’s wellbeing are much more strongly related to national increases in thriving than HDI growth.
But these relationships likely do not entirely explain the increases in wellbeing. Also, the direction of these strong associations could go both ways: greater optimism about the economy and the next generation contributing to better wellbeing, or better wellbeing contributing to more optimism generally in life.
Bottom Line
The world is not short of significant challenges, from climate change to conflicts and technological upheaval. Yet even against this backdrop, more people across more countries say they are living better lives today and are hopeful for tomorrow, and fewer are suffering.
Such improvements do not mean everyone is living the best life possible and no more effort needs to be made in boosting wellbeing. With many people still struggling, most are still not thriving in their lives, and there remains significant regional variation in people’s wellbeing. Still, recent trends suggest that amid the uncertainty, some progress is being made.
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For complete methodology and specific survey dates, please review Gallup's Country Data Set details.
Stay up to date with the latest insights by following @Gallup on X and on Instagram.
