Italian
According to the 2024 Gallup poll, 33% of adults worldwide describe themselves as “prosperous” and only 7% as “suffering”. Confidence in the future is growing, but significant gaps between regions remain
LONDON – In 2024, a historically high proportion of people worldwide say they are satisfied with their lives and optimistic about the future. This is the main finding of the latest global survey conducted by Gallup, which covered more than 140 countries. The percentage of adults who consider themselves “prosperous” – i.e. those who view their current situation and their expected situation in the coming years positively – has reached a global average of 33%, the highest level recorded in the last 17 years.
The survey measures quality of life using the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale, a scale from 0 to 10, where participants are asked to rate their current life and their expected life in five years’ time. In 2024, the average assessment of present life stands at 5.9 points, stable compared to previous years, while the outlook for the future scores an average of 7.2, close to the historic highs reached in 2020.
At the same time, the number of people who describe themselves as “striving”, i.e. with a very negative view of their lives, has fallen to 7%, the lowest since 2007 and almost half the 2014 figure of 12%. These data indicate a widespread improvement in overall subjective well-being, although significant disparities remain between different parts of the world.
In particular, in North America, Australia, New Zealand and Western Europe, the percentage of “thriving” people remains below the 50% threshold, while in other regions such as Latin America and the Caribbean (45%), Eastern and Southern Europe (37%), East Asia (34%), Southeast Asia (32%) and post-Soviet Eurasia (33%) show more consistent improvements. In contrast, the Middle East and North Africa (17%), Sub-Saharan Africa (15%) and South Asia (11%) show more modest or almost no progress compared to 2007.
Over the past decade, some countries in Eastern and Southern Europe, such as Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Lithuania, Armenia, Estonia and Hungary, have seen the proportion of citizens who describe themselves as “prosperous” increase by more than 20 percentage points. The only country to have recorded a significant decrease in this indicator is Switzerland, with a drop of 22 percentage points.
Gallup identifies satisfaction with personal freedoms, which reaches a global median of 81%, and the perception that one’s country is a good place to raise children, shared by 75% of respondents, as the main factors behind these improvements. In addition, economic optimism is high: 42% of adults expect the local economy to improve and 49% believe that their personal living conditions will be better in the near future.
According to Gallup, these factors are more closely related to perceptions of prosperity than traditional indicators such as the Human Development Index. The picture painted by the survey confirms that, despite global challenges, many people around the world today have a more positive view of their well-being and the future than in the recent past.
Photocredit by Gallup.com
