High life satisfaction reported among small-scale societies with low incomes

ERIC D. GALBRAITH; CHRISTOPHER BARRINGTON-LEIGH; SARA MIÑARRO; SANTIAGO ÁLVAREZ-FERNÁNDEZ; EMMANUEL M. N. A. N. ATTOH; PETRA BENYEI; LAURA CALVET-MIR; ROSARIO CARMONA; RUMBIDZAYI CHAKAUYA; ZHUO CHEN; FASCO CHENGULA; ÁLVARO FERNÁNDEZ-LLAMAZARES; DAVID GARCÍA-DEL-AMO; MARCOS GLAUSER; TOMAS HUANCA; IZQUIERDO, ANDREA E.; ANDRÉ B. JUNQUEIRA; MARISA LANKER; XIAOYUE LI ; JULIETTE MARIEL; MOHAMED D. MIARA; VINCENT PORCHER; ANNA PORCUNA-FERRER; ANNA SCHLINGMANN; REINMAR SEIDLER; UTTAM BABU SHRESTHA; PRIYATMA SINGH; MIQUEL TORRENTS-TICÓ; TUNGALAG ULAMBAYAR; RIHAN WU; VICTORIA REYES-GARCÍA

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

ELSEVIER

Año: 2024 vol. 121

Global polls have shown that people in high-income countries generally report beingmore satisfied with their lives than people in low-income countries. The persistence ofthis correlation, and its similarity to correlations between income and life satisfactionwithin countries, could lead to the impression that high levels of life satisfaction canonly be achieved in wealthy societies. However, global polls have typically overlookedsmall-scale, nonindustrialized societies, which can provide an alternative test of the con-sistency of this relationship. Here, we present results from a survey of 2,966 members ofIndigenous Peoples and local communities among 19 globally distributed sites. We findthat high average levels of life satisfaction, comparable to those of wealthy countries, arereported for numerous populations that have very low monetary incomes. Our resultsare consistent with the notion that human societies can support very satisfying lives fortheir members without necessarily requiring high degrees of monetary wealth.