The Keys To Human Flourishing: Survey Finds Faith And Relationships Outweigh Wealth
(ANALYSIS) Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR) and Harvard University's Human Flourishing Program, along with Gallup and the Center for Open Science, released on Wednesday the first findings of their ongoing worldwide survey examining what makes for human flourishing.
I am a faculty member at ISR but had no role in the study and was only shown the results, under embargo, a week ago. Typically, such reports pass unnoticed in the press since there are many of them and, to be honest, most are too boring to make the news cycle.
But The New York Times will have both a news story and op-ed on the matter, and there will be a longer article in Atlantic, the pinnacles of American journalism. The survey has drawn attention because of its mammoth scale, rigorous analysis and often-surprising results.
In scale, it has three striking features. First, the study covers over 200,000 interviewees in 22 countries, spanning all six populated continents. The countries were selected to maximize coverage of the world's population, ensure geographic, cultural, religious diversity and the actual possibility of collecting data. It has findings worldwide and for particular countries. Currently, the research covers 46% of the global population. With the proposed addition of China, it will have 23 countries representing 64% of the global population.
Second, it will have a five-year longitudinal data — “longitudinal” being social science-speak that it won't merely give a snapshot of respondents at one point of time, but will see how results might change over time.
Third, it covers a wide range of the many aspects of what human flourishing might be. It is premised on the idea that flourishing, a state in which all aspects of a person’s life are good, is multidimensional and includes over 100 distinct aspects of respondents’ lives. There have been previous surveys of human happiness but they have tended simply to ask people if they are happy. This report examines a wider range of factors: health, happiness, meaning, character, relationships and financial security.
These categories are subdivided. “Well-being” contains “emotional, cognitive, and volitional well-being, corresponding to traditional and empirical division of the mind into emotions, intellect, and will. "I am impressed by the footnote here that references, among others, “Thomas Aquinas (Aquinas,1274/1948),” not simply as an historical example but as an ongoing and illuminating authority on the matter.
The role of the Center for Open Science is key. An ongoing scandal, especially in the social sciences, is that reports often do not provide access to their data so that others can check them, and when data is provided other researchers often find different results. To counteract this, the flourishing studies give open access to the raw data so others can inspect them and also conduct their own further research.
There are many complex results, usually hedged with cautions about the need for further study. Some key findings are:
— Most previous studies of age and human flourishing have tended to see younger and older people as doing better while those in the middle are comparatively worse off. While there are country differences, this study finds a general tendency that older people are flourishing more than young people. It states: “Young people are struggling.”
— Men and women report roughly similar flourishing scores globally, with variation between countries. Women tend to do better than men in Japan whereas men do better in Brazil, but worldwide the results are similar.
— Those who attend religious services flourish more. Unlike some of the other measures, this is consistently important across almost all countries and its effects are strongest in the most secular, usually western, countries. Despite common reports in the popular press about the baneful effects of religion on human life, this finding is consistent with most serious social science surveys. Of course, there are dramatic exceptions, just think ISIS or Afghanistan, but overall serious religion correlates with human wellbeing.
The WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic) countries do not come out on top. Richer developed countries score higher on financial security and life evaluation but poorer nations more than make up for this on meaning and purpose, and relationships. Strikingly, in general, meaning in life and composite flourishing is negatively correlated with GDP per capita. Money is not making people flourish more.
Putting aside financial indicators, the top five ranking countries are, in order, Indonesia, Mexico, Philippines, Israel and Nigeria. When financial indicators are included the top five are Indonesia, Israel, Philippines, Mexico and Poland. On these two measures, out of 22 countries the U.S. comes in at 15th and 11th, respectively, while the U.K. is 20th, almost at the bottom, in both measures.
We should be cautious about quick takes on these results. But we can say that, for human flourishing, meaning, purpose, community, relationships, and religion count more than wealth and success. Which comports with most wisdom and religious teaching.
Paul Marshall is the Wilson Professor of Religious Freedom at Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion, director of the Religious Freedom Institute’s South and Southeast Asia Action Team, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and author of over 20 books on religion and politics. His latest book is “Called to be Friends: Called to Serve.”