Most people are happy

Abstract

Myers and Diener (1995) asked "Who is happy?" but examined the question of who is more and who is less happy. In fact, most people report a positive level of subjective well-being (SWB), and say that they are satisfied with domains such as marriage, work, and leisure. People in disadvantaged groups on average report positive well-being, and measurement methods in addition to self-report indicate that most people's affect is primarily pleasant. Cross-national data suggest that there is a positive level of SWB throughout the world, with the possible exception of very poor societies. In 86% of the 43 nations for which nationally representative samples are available, the mean SWB response was above neutral. Several hypotheses to explain the positive levels of SWB are discussed.