Money cannot buy happiness, and these countries try it.
The first global flourishing study has determined countries where people “flourish” more.
It expands beyond the annual report of world happiness, which often highlights the high quality of life in the Nordic nations, the new research deepens in all areas of people’s life beyond classifying how satisfied they are with their lives.
Researchers at Harvard University surveyed more than 200,000 people from 22 countries that cover the six populated continents, representing 64% of the world’s population.
Indonesia headed the list, followed by Israel, the Philippines, Mexico and Poland, according to the findings published in the Nature Mental Health magazine.
Then, Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania and Argentina completed the first ten.
And despite being one of the richest countries on the list, the United States reached a humble No. 12, just behind Hong Kong, while the United Kingdom was found in a miserable number 20.
The researchers defined flowering as “a state in which all aspects of a person’s life are good”, which means that “a well -lived life is more than health and happiness.”
The researchers added additional facets to determine a well -lived life, including happiness and satisfaction with life, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, nearby social relations and financial and material stability.
Indonesia is not a rich country, but it was highly classified as measures of relations and pro-social features, which foster social and community connections.
At the opposite end of the scale, Japan appeared as the place where people bloom less. Despite being a rich country where citizens tend to live to old age, people in Japan are less likely to have a close friend.
“We are not here to say that these results (wealth, longer lives) do not matter much, or that we should not worry about democracy, we should not worry about economic growth, we should not worry about public health,” said Brendan Case, a study author, according to the Daily Mail.
“But it is interesting to consider that the global flourishing study raises some important questions about the possible compensation involved in that process.”
The team recognized three key findings about age, mental health and connection with the community, all of which were crucial factors in the classification of the United States.
On the one hand, the connection between age and flowering varies in all countries.
For a long time it is believed that satisfaction with life is typically greater in early adulthood, medium -sized falls and rise again in old age.
However, this was not true with flowering, most obviously in the United States and other high -income countries. In the United States, the flourishing factor constantly increased with age.
It was also discovered that mental health is a key factor. Physical health tends to remain the same with age, but poor mental health retains young people back, again, especially in the United States.
The researchers also found that participating in weekly group activities, in particular, the Church, generally increased people’s ability to bloom.
The only high -income countries in the upper half of the list were Israel and Poland. Most of the developed countries reported less meaning, less and less satisfactory relations and communities, and less positive emotions than those of less developed places.
In contrast, people in the countries that flourish may not have high income, but have good friends, marriages and community participation, especially in religious communities.
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“We need to discover how to foster economic development without compromising meaning, purpose and relationships,” the study authors wrote at the New York Times.
They affirmed that their “work offers an opportunity to reflect on the ways in which much of the developed world may have been lost and explore the paths that could take us back to happier lives.”
