Not Flourishing

We examine evidence on the well-being and ill-being of the young for 22 countries in the Global Flourishing Study (GFS) 2022-2024 with the commonly used 12-component “flourishing” index and a new 4-component “not flourishing” index. Although flourishing is U-shaped in age in the pooled data it rises in age in 13 countries and declines in 7. By contrast, not-flourishing declines in age overall, and in each of its four components, and it declines in age in 15 of the 22 countries. We explore sensitivity of results to survey mode in countries using both computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI) and computer-assisted web-based interviews (CAWI). When CATI is used, the young are happier than other age groups, but the opposite is the case when data are collected via CAWI. We validate the findings with analyses from two other data sets. First, we construct flourishing and not flourishing indices using different variables for the four European countries in the GFS - Germany, Spain, Sweden and UK - from the interviewer based European Social Survey (ESS) of 2023-2024. As with the GFS, the not-flourishing data shows ill-being declines in age while the flourishing data is more mixed. Second, we examine the internet-based Global Minds (GM) surveys, 2020-2025, on the same group of countries, and find well-being rises in age for all in both flourishing and not-flourishing variables. We argue that trends in youth suicide, self-harm and mental health hospitalizations are consistent with the age patterns in the not-flourishing index and with the internet-based survey evidence from both the flourishing and not-flourishing indexes.