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 world is becoming happier. More people across more countries say they are living better lives today and are hopeful for tomorrow, and fewer are suffering. 33% of adults across 142 countries rate their lives as "thriving", and the trend suggests even better times to come 🌍😊 pic.twitter.com/hqUk9N3nLu
— Mark Henry (@Mark_J_Henry) July 30, 2025