Rethinking National Well‐Being: Introducing a Measure of Wealth‐Adjusted Life Satisfaction in 116 Countries

National life satisfaction scores are commonly used to compare well‐being across countries. However, they do not adequately account for significant differences in objective living conditions between nations. This study introduces wealth‐adjusted life satisfaction (WALS), a novel measure that captures how effectively countries convert economic resources into subjective well‐being. Using Gallup World Poll data from 116 countries, WALS was computed by residualizing national life satisfaction on gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Random Forest and cluster analyses revealed key predictors of WALS and identified distinct country clusters, respectively. Notably, some lower‐income countries (e.g., Nicaragua and Kyrgyzstan) scored high on WALS, whereas some high‐income countries (e.g., Bahrain and Japan) scored low. Key predictors of WALS include perceived job quality, experiences of enjoyment and autonomy, greater involvement in volunteering and greater opportunities for forming friendships. A distinct cluster of low‐wealth, high‐WALS countries was identified, characterized by collectivist and religious values, relatively high perceived job quality and strong prosocial engagement.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  European Journal of Social Psychology

• Publication date

  2025-09-07

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1002/ejsp.70023
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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