202,898 People in 22 Countries Take the Harvard FI (VanderWeele et al., 2024)

The Question

If you measured flourishing the same way across the world's major cultures, which countries would actually score highest, and would income predict the answer?

What They Found

• The global mean on the Harvard Flourishing Index composite landed at 6.92 out of 10, with significant variation between countries on every domain
• Indonesia, Mexico, and the Philippines topped the composite rankings, while several wealthier countries scored noticeably lower, breaking the assumption that income predicts flourishing
• Meaning & Purpose and Character & Virtue were the highest-scoring domains worldwide; Financial & Material Stability was the lowest, even in high-income countries
• The expected age curve was disrupted: in many wealthy countries, young adults scored lower than older generations, reversing the pattern seen in earlier well-being research
• The six-domain structure replicated across all 22 countries, supporting the use of the Harvard FI as a cross-culturally comparable measure rather than a Western-only instrument

How They Tested It

• Sampled 202,898 adults across 22 countries on six populated continents through a Harvard, Baylor, and Gallup partnership
• Administered the 12-item Secure Flourish Index from VanderWeele (2017) alongside hundreds of demographic, social, and life-history items
• Used nationally representative sampling within each country and statistical weighting to allow valid cross-country comparisons
• Wave 1 reported in 2024; the study is designed for 5 annual waves through 2028, which will eventually support longitudinal claims about how flourishing changes over time

Caveats

• Wave 1 is cross-sectional, so the cross-country differences cannot yet be attributed to specific causes; the longitudinal claims wait for later waves
• The 22-country sample, while large, omits major regions including most of Sub-Saharan Africa and much of Central Asia, so “global” is a useful approximation rather than a literal claim
• Cross-cultural comparisons of self-reported well-being are sensitive to response styles and translation choices, which the authors address with statistical adjustments but cannot fully eliminate

How Reborn Helps

Reborn's Harvard Flourishing Index compares your composite against the Wave 1 global mean of 6.92 so you can see where you stand on the same scale used in the largest flourishing study ever run.