How the world rates its life, as Jev imagines it

For each of about 145 countries, does Jev know how people there rate their lives on the Gallup ladder (0 = worst possible life, 10 = best), and where is it most wrong?

result145 questions

Jev ranks 145 countries' life ratings closely like the World Happiness Report (rank correlation 0.85) and is off by 0.49 steps on a 0-10 ladder on average. It's most wrong where recent history is grim or surprising: it overrates Botswana (5.9 vs 3.5), Afghanistan (3.7 vs 1.4) and Malawi (4.7 vs 3.3), and underrates Venezuela (3.9 vs 5.8), Libya (4.0 vs 5.7) and Serbia (5.5 vs 6.7).

How to read this: Each dot is a country. Across: its published average on the life ladder. Up: Jev's estimate. On the diagonal would be exact; labeled dots are the biggest misses.

145 countries; exact half-step bin 26%; 90% interval on the mean error [-0.043, 0.138]. By region the mean error runs from -0.40 (North America) to +0.36 (Africa).

In short

Jev knows the broad map of how countries rate their lives, ordering 145 countries with a rank correlation of 0.85.
Its biggest misses track news and history rather than wealth: it puts Venezuela at 3.9 where people there say 5.8.
It lands in the exact half-point bin for only 26% of countries, so any single country's estimate is rough.

What the data shows

Ben affleck smoking meme: Jev, guessing how people rate their lives from the headlines alone — Jev, guessing how people rate their lives from the headlines alone

The order is close: rank correlation 0.85, and an average miss of 0.49 steps.
Exact bins are hard: it lands in the right half-point bin for 26% of countries.
Its biggest misses have a story: it overrates Botswana (5.9 vs 3.5), Afghanistan (3.7 vs 1.4, the lowest of all 145) and Malawi (4.7 vs 3.3); it underrates Venezuela (3.9 vs 5.8), Libya (4.0 vs 5.7) and Serbia (5.5 vs 6.7).
Not a wealth error: its misses don't follow GDP per head. By region, it runs a little low for North America (-0.40) and a little high for Africa (+0.36).

What it means, and what it doesn't

Jev knows the broad shape of the world's happiness map. Its misses look like a picture assembled from news: countries known for crisis get a lower guess than people there give themselves (Venezuela, Libya), and some recent collapses haven't registered (Afghanistan, Botswana).

It doesn't show Jev reasons from wealth to happiness; that was the error the study looked for, and it isn't there.

Caveats

It may remember the rankings. The World Happiness Report is published every year and widely covered. Jev may recall older editions better than the 2025 one used for scoring, which would explain misses where a country's rating moved sharply in recent years (Afghanistan's collapse, Botswana's fall).
Half-step answers. Jev answered in half-point bins (3.0-3.5, 3.5-4.0 ...), so an estimate carries about a quarter point of rounding, and "exact" means the right half-point bin.
The truth has error too. Each country's figure is a three-year average of Gallup samples, with sampling error of around 0.1.

Jev on this experiment

Would a person find it interesting to read?: Yes81%
Does it describe you?: No54%
Would you have predicted it?: No59%
How fair is the comparison?: The comparison is reasonable
How much should a reader rely on it?: Moderately
Which caveat matters most?: It may remember the rankings90%

Why ask this

Every year the World Happiness Report ranks countries by how people there rate their own lives, and every year it has surprises: Costa Rica and Mexico near the top, rich East Asian countries in the middle. A model that assumes money buys happiness would miss exactly those.

It matters whenever a model writes or advises about a place: a travel piece, a report on a country's mood after a crisis, a student's essay. If its sense of how people feel comes from headlines, it will paint whole countries as gloomier, or cheerier, than the people there say they are.

How this was done

The people and the data

The Gallup World Poll asks people in each country every year to place their life on a ladder from 0 (the worst possible life for them) to 10 (the best). The World Happiness Report 2025 publishes each country's average over 2022-2024; this experiment uses those averages as published by Our World in Data (CC BY 4.0), for 145 countries.

What Jev was asked

One question per country, describing the ladder in full:

The Gallup World Poll asks people to imagine a ladder with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom, the worst possible life for them, to 10 at the top, the best possible life, and to say which step they stand on now. What was the average answer in Botswana in 2022-2024?
Below 3.0 · 3.0 to 3.5 · 3.5 to 4.0 · ... · 7.5 to 8.0 · 8.0 or above

That's 146 new questions, each asked with the answer bins in three shuffled orders and averaged.

How it was measured

Jev's estimate is the average of the bins' middles, weighted by how likely it rated each. It is compared with the published average: how well Jev orders the countries (a rank correlation: 1 same order, 0 no relation), the average miss in ladder steps, how often it picks the right half-point bin, and whether its misses line up with a country's wealth or region.

Where these questions live

145 questions across 1 topic of the map. Each opens on the map with every question in it.

Countries

How Countries Rate Their Lives145

Every question

All 145 questions behind this result, the telling ones first: the examples the analysis points to, then the ones where Jev misses, biggest gap first.

Jev’s own answer

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