Global Indicator: Emotional Wellbeing

What We Measure

Gallup measures emotional wellbeing by asking people around the world 10 questions about their daily emotional experiences. These questions form the Positive and Negative Experience Indexes of the Gallup World Poll, which offer leaders insights into the health of their societies that they cannot gain from economic measures alone.

Emotional Wellbeing

Negative Experience Index in 2024

Positive Experience Index in 2024

Why it matters

Why Emotional Wellbeing Matters

Emotions are powerful. Yet, traditional indicators are not designed to measure emotional wellbeing. While most leaders watch measures such as GDP and unemployment closely, few pay attention to how their people are feeling.

Gallup created the Positive and Negative Experience Indexes to capture a snapshot of emotional wellbeing worldwide by measuring people’s daily experiences with pain, worry, stress, anger, enjoyment, laughter and more.

Gallup has produced global statistics on wellbeing and happiness since 2006. These metrics provide global insights into the health of societies and perfectly complement the objective indicators for human development.

What Is the Positive Experience Index?

The Positive Experience Index measures people’s daily positive emotions worldwide, based on nearly two decades of Gallup World Poll data collected through nationally representative surveys.

The Positive Experience Index score is a mean of all valid affirmative responses to the items below multiplied by 100. Higher scores indicate that positive emotions are more pervasive in a country. These scores strongly relate to people's perceptions of their living standard, their personal freedoms and the presence of social networks.

Because this measure is consistent across more than 140 countries and areas each year, it allows reliable comparisons of emotional wellbeing worldwide.

What percentage of adults feel well-rested?

What percentage of adults feel respected?

What percentage of adults smile or laugh a lot?

What percentage of adults learn or do something interesting?

What percentage of adults experience enjoyment?

What Is the Negative Experience Index?

The Negative Experience Index measures people's daily negative emotions worldwide, drawing on nearly two decades of Gallup World Poll data collected through nationally representative surveys.

The Negative Experience Index score is the mean of all valid affirmative responses to the items below multiplied by 100. The higher the score, the more pervasive negative emotions are in a country. People's experiences with health problems and their ability to afford food are predictive of higher negative scores.

Because the questions are standardized across countries and tracked annually, the Negative Experience Index provides one of the most reliable global indicators of daily distress.

What percentage of adults feel physical pain?

What percentage of adults feel worry?

What percentage of adults feel sadness?

What percentage of adults feel stress?

What percentage of adults feel anger?

Survey Methods

Gallup’s Positive and Negative Experience Indexes

The results are based on telephone and in-person interviews with nationally representative, probability-based samples among the adult population aged 15 and older, in 144 countries and areas in 2024.

For results based on the total sample of national adults in 2024, the margin of sampling error ranges between ±2.1 and ±5.4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. The margin of error reflects the influence of data weighting. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

Is a Kinder World a Happier One?

Next Steps

What Is the State of Emotional Wellbeing by Country?

View More Country-Level Data Explore our Global Emotions interactive to see the latest data on emotions from each country.

Explore Data

Read the State of the World's Emotional Health Report Check out the latest in-depth report, released in partnership with the World Health Summit, on the links between emotions, health, and peace around the globe.

View Report

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