Indonesia has been ranked as the world’s “most-flourishing” country, according to a first-ever study measuring such an indicator, based on factors such as high life satisfaction, strong social relations and religious participation.
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The Global Flourishing Study (GFS), written by researchers in Harvard, Baylor University and Gallup, asked more than 200,000 respondents in 23 countries and territories about five aspects of their life: happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and close social relationships.
Conducted between 2022 and 24, it aims to expand the scope of the annual World Happiness Report, which often features Nordic nations as the world’s happiest countries. But that barometer does not capture the “fullness of well-being”, the scientists behind GFS – Byron Johnson, Tyler J. VanderWeele and Brendan Case – wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times on April 30.
“These rankings reinforce a key supposition of our globalised political and economic order: poor countries are unhappy because they are poor, and wealth is a critical precondition for individual and societal flourishing,” the scientists wrote.
“The three of us conceive of happiness, or flourishing, more broadly: as a state of affairs in which all aspects of your life are relatively good, including the social environments in which you live.”
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In all five aspects, Indonesia scored the highest flourishing points with 8.47, followed by Mexico and the Philippines, while Japan displayed the lowest level of flourishing with 5.93.