WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The number of Americans classified as "suffering" has increased by 3 million over the past year. While an average of 3% of Americans were suffering in February of 2008, the number has remained higher over the past 12 months, consistently between 4% and 5%. While a monthly high of 5% was recorded last June when gas prices spiked, some days in March have reached 6%, suggesting suffering is only on the uptrend.
The Life Evaluation Index, a component of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, asks at least 1,000 Americans each day to evaluate their current lives as well as their expectations 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. Americans in the "thriving" group say that they presently stand on step 7 or higher of the ladder and expect to stand on step 8 or higher five years from now. Americans in the "suffering" group, on the other hand, say they presently stand on steps 0 to 4 of the ladder and expect to stand on steps 0 to 4 five years from now. Those who are neither thriving nor suffering are considered to be "struggling."
The increase in suffering has been accompanied by declines in the percentage of Americans who are thriving. The index bottomed out in the fourth quarter of 2008 as the nation's economic woes came to the forefront. And while there was a considerable rebound in well-being as the new year and the run up to the presidential inauguration got underway, the "January-effect" seems to have been short lived as February and March of 2009 has seen the index approach previous lows.
Given the large number of the monthly survey participants, small changes from month to month are highly significant and can have a considerable effect on the national population. To underscore this point, the increase in percentage suffering from 3.3% in February of 2008 to 4.7% in February of 2009 means the number of Americans suffering has swelled by 3 million during this period.
Managers, Business Owners Bear the Brunt
The large sample sizes also allow Gallup to analyze well-being for a variety of subgroups in the population. For example, Americans in all types of jobs reported significantly lower well-being in the fourth quarter of 2008 than they did at the beginning of the year, but business owners and those in management saw the largest shifts from thriving to struggling. While 60.8% of business owners were thriving in the first quarter of 2008, by the fourth quarter only 47.1% were thriving. In the same period, the number of business owners who were struggling increased by more than 13 percentage points from 37.0% to 50.3%. Those in clerical positions, sales, and professional jobs also saw double-digit decreases in the percentage thriving.
Poorest Americans See Increased Suffering
While all income groups have shown deteriorating levels of well-being, as measured by the Life Evaluation Index, it is those at the bottom of the income distribution whose well-being has declined most. For the poorest Americans with annual incomes of less than $12,000, this deterioration in well-being is reflected most in the large increase in suffering, from 8% to 10.5% in the period from February of 2008 to February of 2009.
On the other hand, the highest income groups in the study with annual incomes of $90,000 and more have shown a steep decline in the percentage thriving, from 68.1% in February of 2008 to 59.5% in February of 2009.
Bottom Line
Americans classified as suffering tend to report less access to basic needs such as food, shelter, and healthcare, have higher disease burden, and come from the lowest income groups, which are hardest hit when the economy contracts. While the Life Evaluation Index registers this by showing a substantial increase in the percentage of Americans in the lowest income groups as suffering, the index also shows that those in the highest income groups are more likely to be struggling. And given the large increases in percentage struggling in the highest income groups, it is important to note that the well-being of the affluent as well as the very poor has deteriorated greatly in the current economic downturn.
Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with more than 350,000 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted from February 2008 to February 2009 as part of Gallup Poll Daily tracking. For results based each monthly sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±0.5 percentage point. The sample sizes for results by profession vary and may be subject to a larger margin of error.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones (for respondents with a landline 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.
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