WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a comprehensive measure of the state of Americans' health, declined to a noteworthy degree in 2008, reflecting, in part, the emotional and physical strain the financial crisis has put on society. The Well-Being Index score for the nation went from 66.3 in January 2008, to a high of 67 in February, and stayed relatively steady throughout the year before beginning a downward slide in September, ultimately falling to a low of 63.3 in December. Each point represents approximately 2.2 million people 18 and older.
The Well-Being Index is an average of six sub-indices, which look individually at life evaluation, healthy behaviors, work environment, physical health, emotional health, and access to basic necessities. Each sub-index is composed of a series of questions, asked nightly of 1,000 national adults. The monthly scores for all of the sub-indices, except for the Basic Access Index, dropped at least slightly by the end of 2008.
The most significant change can be seen in the Life Evaluation sub-index, which fell 14.3 points from a high of 47.4 in February to a low of 33.1 in November. The Life Evaluation Index categorizes respondents as either "thriving", "struggling", or "suffering", in accordance with how they rate their current lives as well as their expectation of where they will be in five years using the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale with steps numbered from 0 to 10, where "0" indicates the worst possible life and "10" the best possible life.
While the Life Evaluation Index moved up and down throughout the year, the major drop off happened in November and December, amid a worsening economic crisis. Gallup previously reported that beginning in April the number of struggling Americans outnumbered those who are thriving, a trend that has continued since and a stark contrast to how the year began.
The Healthy Behaviors sub-index, which measures Americans' exercise and eating habits, also declined sharply towards the end of the year, dropping 3.9 points between October and December. "This is a finding we're going to have to watch carefully to see if it's a seasonal effect, perhaps related to the holidays and winter weather, or the beginning of a longer term trend tied to the economic situation," said Virginia Gurley, M.D., M.P.H.,, vice president of value and outcomes research at Healthways
Regardless of age, gender, income, or marital status, every group experienced a drop in their Well-Being Index score from January to December of 2008. However, women, those making less than $500 a month, single people, and those ages 18-24 and 35-49 show a larger decrease in well-being than that seen nationally. (Click page 2 to see the full demographic results.)
To see declines in well-being cut across each of these major demographic groups tells a clear story of the severity of the economic crisis of 2008, the negative effects of which appear to have touched almost all Americans. For the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, Gallup conducted over 360,000 interviews in 2008, making it one of the largest and most accurate databases of its kind.
For more insights please see Well-Being Lessons Learned in '08 and Opportunities for '09, a Q&A with Gallup's chief scientist behind the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index.
Survey Methods
For the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, Gallup is interviewing no fewer than 1,000 U.S. adults nationwide each day during 2008. Monthly results comprise roughly 30,000 interviews. For results based on these samples, the maximum margin of sampling error is ±2 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
About the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index™
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index is the first and largest survey of its kind, with 1,000 calls a day, seven days a week. It is the official statistic for Well-Being in America, giving a daily measure of people's well-being at the close of every day based on the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of health as not only the absence of infirmity and disease but also a state of physical, mental and social well-being. The Well-Being Index will be a daily measure determining the correlation between the places where people work and the communities in which they live, and how that and other factors impact their well-being. Additionally, The Well-Being Index will increase the understanding of how those factors impact the financial health of corporations and communities. For additional information, go to www.well-beingindex.com.
Click below to get more stories, RSS feeds, and e-mail alerts on these topics:
