The Gallup World Poll asks an amazing battery of questions about the subjectively-experienced lives of people across the globe, and hence offers an unparalleled opportunity to contrast the subjectively-experienced lives of those in rich and poor countries.
This chart is my personal favorite, showing the proportion of people in each country who report having smiled or laughed a lot the previous day. Higher levels of economic development are clearly associated with more smiles and laughter. But equally, there are a lot of exceptions to this rule, and plenty of puzzles.
Laotians are more likely to smile than anyone else, and the Irish appear to have earned their national reputation as jolly japesters. My own country, Australia, comes in as the 29th of the 131 countries in the Smile Stakes, while the U.S. is a disappointing 45th.
Smiling and Laughing
This survey also asks about a range of feelings that might have been experienced the previous day. It is clear that G.D.P. is correlated with more people reporting enjoyment, while those in richer countries are less likely to report experiencing physical pain, depression, boredom, and anger.
Interestingly, G.D.P. appears uncorrelated with feelings of worry.
