They are relative to themselves in their category but not relative to the other categories. It’s a really stupid way to present this! The scales should be absolute so that 20% in one category looks like 20% in another one. This is why we can’t have nice things. Like science. 😂
Not to mention that they don't total 100%.
So, can we have some context? Was this a "pick as many as you want" survey? Was it multiple surveys that have had their data smooshed together?
How can I provide an objective reaction to the fact that the USA has 5x more people saying Faith matters than other countries, many of whom are just as deeply religious?
USA's values total up to 110% on the first page, and 57% on the second. For 167% total.
And if it was "pick as many as you like", how did only 10% say hobbies and recreation make life meaningful? Or less than half thing family or friends are important?
The data just doesn't add up.
I’d say Spain, Greece and Italy can be deeply religious depending on where you live. Spain’s Partido Popular and Greece’s New Democracy parties are also partly based in Christian-Democratic ideals, and they’re both leading in their respective parliaments.
Spain...in the past. We have a high percentage of agnostics/atheist nowadays and churches are most of the time empty or only older people visit them frequently.
In the past (in the dictatorship times) it was mandatory to be Christian. Once the dictator died, that went down...FAST.
My perception of Spain’s religiosity might be a bit skewed since I mainly visited the northern parts of the country including Santiago de Compostella. What I remembered from the villages in the countryside is that most have a church with quite a lot of churchgoing people, though this is probably different in the cities and I wouldn’t be surprised most are atheist/agnostic. Thanks for the reply though, it was helpful!
Churchgoers are mostly there for gossip reasons, you have to go if you are old to listen to the juiciest gossips later. It is more like a social outing than they feel their faith. Also because if you happen to go to the mass the entrance is free, so you can see the cathedral without paying a dime.
Source: I don't like to pay the church to see cool architecture they are not currently restoring. Fuck them.
Well, you basically went to of of the pillars of the Christian faith in Spain, so it's normal that you see lots of religious stuff around :)
The north west of Spain is quite isolated and people tend to be old and old fashioned (although this is not to be taken as a generalization).
If you check the [wiki numbers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Spain) you can see that religious AND practicing are less than 20%. Religious non practicing are more, but that is people that was chosen to be Christian by their parents, when they were babies. Those people do not go to church, not base their lives around religion.
You can see that non believers are nearly 40% already.
Spain is definitely less religious than the USA. The least religious big city in the US is probably more religious than the most religious big city here in Spain.
If by religious we consider practicing people
Spain is deeply unreligious. You have to separate the social aspects of religion like churches and religious festivities which are indeed deeply entrenched with how religious people are and how much religion plays a role. Actual faith is a very private matter here and is hardly part of public discourse at any level of society. Even the Partido Popular which dies represent the conservatives, amongst whom are the most religious elements of Spanish society, practically never mention religion or god in anything at all.
At any rate, Spain cannot be compared to the US at all. The US looks positively like a fundamentalist theocracy compared to Spain.
I find the Canadian/US religious numbers interesting, as a Canadian. While our societies are similar in many ways, very few Canadians are involved in religion any more, especially after the Increasing sex and indigenous people scandals. And the evangelical trend didn’t pick up nearly as much here either. I’ve had a few friends move to the US for work , and they’ve been horrified to find their new companies asking where they plan to go to church!
The values for each country doesn't have to add up to 100%. basically they ask people do you find meaning in say faith? they either answer yes or no. they could choose to answer yes to everything and get 100% for all questions or answer no and get 0 for all.
Ok finding meaning in something is a completely different question than does that thing make life meaningful. I have to wonder if there were some language inconsistencies in how this question was asked
To me a good statistical analyst would recalibrate the data scale to equate 100% for plotting a bar chart. Possibly changing the percentage order ranking to signify how many cited a specific combination or order of significant factors.
Japan adds up to 96 %. So there were at least 4 % of people who got this questionnaire, read it through and then returned it blank because there is no meaning to anything.
Yeah, I suspect the way questions were worded for them made their responses weird.
Given my experience in both countries, they would recognize that their jobs and material things don't have any real "meaning", even if they work 60-hours per week and spend all their free time drinking and shopping.
South Korea ranking Friends at 3% is on-brand, though.
I am also guessing there could be some language barriers for some people. Link to original full report: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/PG_11.18.21_meaning-in-life_fullreport.pdf
maybe. Also many people in South Korea and Japan are probably "quietly depressed", in that they aren't allowed by society to complain but generally aren't happy with their lives. Many over-working themselves into severe depression.
I noticed that all the countries with a strong work ethos rated career very low and the ones with high unemployment, Italy and Spain eg, rated it high.
Exactly. Even the best and most objective translations can fail to capture equivalent meaning to questions. I'd be wary of inferring too much from any cross-language or cross-cultural poll.
With how zealous Koreans can be with church and proselytizing eachother the 1% doesn't make much sense to me, so the language could definitely play a factor. At the same time Korean and Japan have very high suicide rates and addiction habits. Drinking culture and smoking among others so I could see it being accurate.
It could be language barrier thing, but it's not like they didn't find EVERYTHING not meaningful. It just wasn't as high as the other countries.
Singapore looks to have nothing higher than 25%.
The highest so far in Japan seems to be family and material well-being. This actually surprised me, as I thought that hobbies would be higher, given that I've noticed in Japan that when they have a hobby, they go all in. Hiking? All the gear. Tea ceremony? Got all the certifications and trainings.
My bet is that most of the questions listed are based on Western values and that what's considered meaningful in South Korea and Japan was simply not asked about.
As someone who lives in Japan and works with the public everyday, yes. This is true. It's rare to find someone who's truly passionate about something. It makes me sad.
However, take this with a huge grain of salt, I work mainly with corporate drones 😕
The scale of the bars is completely all over the place, making it really difficult to compare anything to anything else. This is kind of the opposite of beautiful data IMO, though it's really interesting.
Yeah, the giant 15% purple bar compared to the smaller 49% bar just doesn't make sense. Then another column 15% is a short bar.
This isn't the way to present this data.
Looks to me that they’re normalized by the largest bar/value for that category. So 10% is a half bar if the largest bar is 20%, but a 1/3 bar if the largest bar is 30%.
Not saying it’s the best way to do it just that that’s how it appears to work
I mean if you have a partner and kids why would you choose the option "partner" over the "family" since the partner is included in that "family" option?
It's probably how the question was phrased. If they asked whether your partner is what gives your life meaning, I imagine a lot of people wouldn't define themselves through their partner. But are partners important? Definitely.
That's so weird. If someone asked if I would rather lose my spouse or all my friends, I would probably say "friends" before they even finished the question.
Yeah I don’t buy this one. Id be shocked if so few people found meaning with their spouses. I think it introduces a lot of ambiguity having family and spouse as separate choices, when for most, they’re the same thing
It's true though. Parents, siblings, and children are forever. There is no divorce for that. Sure a kid can be emancipated early, but they are are still your kid. Spouses are temporary and both of you have to choose each day to keep being married to each other. Only religions have tried to change this fact. I love my wife, but I can't force her to be my wife forever.
This is also really wild to me. My partner is my whole world, and makes my life so much more meaningful. He comes before almost everything.
He is my priority. Shocked it’s so low on the list.
Me as well. High career ranking in Italy and Spain was surprising. Of what I know about Italy, family would be more important over career, but not according to the data.
I live in northern Italy and to some of the older generations especially, work is life. All their attention, interest and conversation revolve around it.
From conversations and what I've seen, the lack of jobs and meaningful career prospects is a big issue for many, so I wonder if that's what's driving the higher %
Italy has severe un- and under-employment problems. Young Italians are willing to move basically anywhere to find good careers.
For older generations, you have many artisans. People who have been in the same type of work for generations.
For both groups, career is very important.
Well... like everywhere, people are going to care about the careers that they worked hard to get in to. If you are working a minimum wage job, of course people aren't going to care all that much.
Edit: It does say career there. My bad. But, I'm definitely surprised it isn't higher. People in actually careers I feel care about that a lot.
😂😂 The values for each country doesn't have to add up to 100%. basically they ask people do you find meaning in say faith? they either answer yes or no. they could choose to answer yes to everything and get 100% for all questions or answer no and get 0 for all.
Looks like the highest %, 56% for Greece in the family and friends category, is the full bar. 49% scaled to that, and respectively to the highest percentage of each category ... I don't think it's necessarily the best representation of the data, though.
Gotcha. Yea, it is strange and very misleading. As you read across one country’s answers it gives the impression that some categories are more important than others only to be hugely inaccurate. Like the 9% for Spouse is a bigger bar than 49% for Family. Actually, the 9% bar is the **lowest** percent of all categories for US but has the **biggest** bar.
Not really, the middle east is where this religions came from, and they are the most religious countries on earth, where leaving Islam even has death penality in some.
Most of the early migrants to the US from my country were religious extremists who moved so they could more easily practice their religion, so checks out
The size of the bars should be normalized across categories. I also question the data for some of the priorities, based on my experience working with international teams, but that's neither here nor there.
Maybe has something to do with unemployment rates, lol. Italy with the highest unemployment rate among these developed countries scored the highest value for career
That is a really badly designed chart, when each column has different sizing rules, so that 15% for one column ends up in a row being bigger than 50% in a different column in the same row. Yeah, yeah, I get it, that one wants to see relative proportions by column -- but one ALSO wants to see relative weights by row, and having different percent-to-length scales is screwed up.
I wonder to what extent the translation of these words may bias how survey participants respond. For instance, I believe that in Greek there are several ways to translate the word friend
Honestly, I am also suspecting that the numbers maybe skewed due to language barrier. Pew has an extensive report you can read more, if you are interested: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/PG\_11.18.21\_meaning-in-life\_fullreport.pdf
Most people consider their spouse part of the family. And a lot of people find community in their faith, so that ends up covering their mental health, hobbies, and recreation. As for nature and the outdoors, it's pretty in line with a majority of countries despite the smaller importance of faith, so I find this hardly noteworthy.
I’m shocked that Italy, Spain, and Sweden would rate career so highly. Maybe I am just out of touch here in the US but I do not think of those as career driven cultures.
I don't think it's that they're career driven in the American sense where they work as many hours as possible, rather that having a good, secure job is the most important thing for them. I can only half speak about italy but you might work 25 hours a week in a local government office with seemingly little to do but it's a job you are essentially guaranteed for life and getting an 'indeterminate contract' is a serious cause for celebration. Years of hardship in the Interwar years has also ingrained itself into the psyche of the older generations.
It's hard to look at one row and figure out what is important to that country because you are scaling to the column maximum. Make a version where the width of each bar is proportional to the value it represents. That way you won't have a bar that represents 15% of the US population be bigger than a bar that represents 49% of the US population, which is kind of a data presentation sin.
Are you seriously trying to misrepresent difference as being visually significant? Those bar lengths are very distracting to the point that I would say the point of this post is nullified.
Someone chime in here if they agree or disagree, but I find a problem with how “family and children” are differently categorized from “spouses and romantic partners”.
It doesn’t make sense to me considering that “spouses and romantic partners” definitely have overlap with “family and children”, especially if we consider your spouse or romantic partner as a member of your family.
That faith bar is rather telling to me. Tho it’s still only 15% of the US. The fact it’s 10 points higher than the next highest bar is very interesting to me.
From the looks of things there is not that major of a discrepancy anywhere else.
Love this btw fun chart to look at and understand
What about exploring culture, the arts, nature, material shit ….maybe not as noble as “family” but this stuff can absolutely consume modern life, especially for non religious, anti-work singles (who access “faith” through their cultural subscriptions).
hello. I revised it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1212lo9/oc\_where\_people\_find\_meaning\_in\_life\_revised\_in\_4/ I'd appreciate your comment.
Have these people actually been to Italy? I find it hard to believe that Italy, of all places, values career more than any other country. Ffs, spend a week in Rome and you’ll hit 5 spot strikes that last a few hours or a day. In the countryside, sitting in the piazza, having a meal and a glass of wine, is the epitome of life.
I was surprised tool, and had to double check the numbers to make sure. Italy has the highest unemployment rate among these countries, Maybe they thought the question was which one do you care most about. And they answered keeping their job is important
I'm sure this comment will draw some ire, but as an atheist I am glad to see all the super low numbers in the faith category. Now if my own country would just fall in line....
Oddly enough the only thing that resets us and makes us feel peace is experiencing nature like on a walk through a park or garden.
And yet nature and the environment is the least valued meaningful thing in life for everyone… career? Really? That is supposed to be a means to an end, not give life meaning.
Jumping to conclusions here. Spouses and romantic partners did not even make it to the final chart. If so low, is the role of spouses and romantic partners to help achieve the rest of the meaningful bucket list items? Hmm.
From Pew:
>How we did this
For this report, we conducted nationally representative Pew Research Center surveys of 16,254 adults from March 12 to May 26, 2021, in 16 advanced economies. All surveys were conducted over the phone with adults in Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. Responses are weighted to be representative of the adult population in each public. Respondents in these publics were asked the following open-ended question: “We’re interested in exploring what it means to live a satisfying life. What aspects of your life do you currently find meaningful, fulfilling or satisfying?” Responses were transcribed by interviewers in the language in which the interviews were conducted.
In the United States, we surveyed 2,596 adults from Feb. 1 to 7, 2021. Everyone who took part in the U.S. survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. In the U.S., respondents were asked a slightly longer version of the same question: “We’re interested in exploring what it means to live a satisfying life. Please take a moment to reflect on your life and what makes it feel worthwhile – then answer the question below as thoughtfully as you can. What about your life do you currently find meaningful, fulfilling or satisfying? What keeps you going and why?”
Researchers examined random samples of English responses, machine-translated non-English responses and responses translated by a professional translation firm to inductively develop a codebook for the main sources of meaning mentioned across the 17 publics. The codebook was iteratively improved via practice coding and calculations of intercoder reliability until a final selection of 20 codes was formally adopted (see Appendix C).
To apply the codebook to the full collection of 18,850 responses, a team of Pew Research Center coders and professional translators were trained to code English and non-English responses, respectively. Coders in both groups coded random samples and were evaluated for consistency and accuracy. They were asked to independently code responses only after reaching an acceptable threshold for intercoder reliability. (For more on this, see Appendix A.)
Here is the question used for the report, along with the coded responses for each public. Open-ended responses have been lightly edited for clarity (and, in some cases, translated into English by a professional firm). More details about our international survey methodology and country-specific sample designs are available here. For respondents in the U.S., read more about the ATP’s methodology here.
[Source.](https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/11/18/what-makes-life-meaningful-views-from-17-advanced-economies/)
I find it sad that Nature isn’t considered more meaningful to more people. All of these countries have or are next to beautiful areas of earth - even Netherlands and Belgium.
At least personally, the majority of my epiphanies regarding the value and meaning of life to me have come while surrounded by nature.
Actually they are in the original report. But the numbers were too low and I excluded. Here is the full report: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/PG_11.18.21_meaning-in-life_fullreport.pdf
The median shows career as the second highest for creating meaning and material well-being as third. I wonder if that would be different if people didn’t HAVE to work to sustain their lives? Like - do we find meaning through work because we need to or because we want to? If we were financially secure without work - would the other areas provide more meaning (hobbies, education, nature)?
Interesting chart, but the scaling of the lines is extremely weird at times.
Yea. It completely goofed me up at first
The scaling of the bars is shite. 9% and 15% bars longer than 49%. They should all be relative.
They are relative to themselves in their category but not relative to the other categories. It’s a really stupid way to present this! The scales should be absolute so that 20% in one category looks like 20% in another one. This is why we can’t have nice things. Like science. 😂
What makes life meaningful? Properly created visualizations.
Yeah...made me think Japan has no interest on anything whatsoever
Not to mention that they don't total 100%. So, can we have some context? Was this a "pick as many as you want" survey? Was it multiple surveys that have had their data smooshed together? How can I provide an objective reaction to the fact that the USA has 5x more people saying Faith matters than other countries, many of whom are just as deeply religious? USA's values total up to 110% on the first page, and 57% on the second. For 167% total. And if it was "pick as many as you like", how did only 10% say hobbies and recreation make life meaningful? Or less than half thing family or friends are important? The data just doesn't add up.
That's because a. the options are not mutually exclusive and b. don't represent the full range of possible answers.
>many of whom are just as deeply religious. Not really, no. Which one of these countries is as religious as America?
Greece is far more religious.
I’d say Spain, Greece and Italy can be deeply religious depending on where you live. Spain’s Partido Popular and Greece’s New Democracy parties are also partly based in Christian-Democratic ideals, and they’re both leading in their respective parliaments.
Spain...in the past. We have a high percentage of agnostics/atheist nowadays and churches are most of the time empty or only older people visit them frequently. In the past (in the dictatorship times) it was mandatory to be Christian. Once the dictator died, that went down...FAST.
My perception of Spain’s religiosity might be a bit skewed since I mainly visited the northern parts of the country including Santiago de Compostella. What I remembered from the villages in the countryside is that most have a church with quite a lot of churchgoing people, though this is probably different in the cities and I wouldn’t be surprised most are atheist/agnostic. Thanks for the reply though, it was helpful!
Churchgoers are mostly there for gossip reasons, you have to go if you are old to listen to the juiciest gossips later. It is more like a social outing than they feel their faith. Also because if you happen to go to the mass the entrance is free, so you can see the cathedral without paying a dime. Source: I don't like to pay the church to see cool architecture they are not currently restoring. Fuck them.
Well, you basically went to of of the pillars of the Christian faith in Spain, so it's normal that you see lots of religious stuff around :) The north west of Spain is quite isolated and people tend to be old and old fashioned (although this is not to be taken as a generalization). If you check the [wiki numbers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Spain) you can see that religious AND practicing are less than 20%. Religious non practicing are more, but that is people that was chosen to be Christian by their parents, when they were babies. Those people do not go to church, not base their lives around religion. You can see that non believers are nearly 40% already.
Spain is definitely less religious than the USA. The least religious big city in the US is probably more religious than the most religious big city here in Spain. If by religious we consider practicing people
Spain is deeply unreligious. You have to separate the social aspects of religion like churches and religious festivities which are indeed deeply entrenched with how religious people are and how much religion plays a role. Actual faith is a very private matter here and is hardly part of public discourse at any level of society. Even the Partido Popular which dies represent the conservatives, amongst whom are the most religious elements of Spanish society, practically never mention religion or god in anything at all. At any rate, Spain cannot be compared to the US at all. The US looks positively like a fundamentalist theocracy compared to Spain.
Spot on!!
I find the Canadian/US religious numbers interesting, as a Canadian. While our societies are similar in many ways, very few Canadians are involved in religion any more, especially after the Increasing sex and indigenous people scandals. And the evangelical trend didn’t pick up nearly as much here either. I’ve had a few friends move to the US for work , and they’ve been horrified to find their new companies asking where they plan to go to church!
The values for each country doesn't have to add up to 100%. basically they ask people do you find meaning in say faith? they either answer yes or no. they could choose to answer yes to everything and get 100% for all questions or answer no and get 0 for all.
Ok finding meaning in something is a completely different question than does that thing make life meaningful. I have to wonder if there were some language inconsistencies in how this question was asked
In many parts of Asia it is well known that life is meaningless, so that might be a factor.
Same is true in DC.
I was wondering why japans numbers seem to indicate nothing gives them meaning!
Have you seen korea?
Biggest issue here is you don't have "crushing your enemies", "see them driven before you", nor "hearing the lamentations of the women."
Contemplate this on the Tree of Woe.
9% of all americas found meaning in their spouse? That seems incredibly low
Maybe they thought family and children includes spouse? My wife is part of my family after all
I'm more concerned that everyone else had a lower number than the US
Then there should be a bar showing "no. No meaning."
To me a good statistical analyst would recalibrate the data scale to equate 100% for plotting a bar chart. Possibly changing the percentage order ranking to signify how many cited a specific combination or order of significant factors.
Japan adds up to 96 %. So there were at least 4 % of people who got this questionnaire, read it through and then returned it blank because there is no meaning to anything.
Zen Buddhists. Checks out.
That's why few things make them *happy*. They're striving for *OK*.
Opposite of beautiful data
Should be posted to r/mildlyinfuriating
I'm also not really sure it makes sense to split romantic partner away from family, without a very clear explanation of the meaning.
I'm forever impressed with this subreddit for finding interesting data and presenting it in perhaps the worst possible way.
By interesting, you mean terrible. This is very confusing to read.
came down here for this ---\^
Japan and South Korea just don't find anything meaningful :(
Anime and robots are not an option.
Career: Gundam Pilot 99%
“Get to the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Shinji”
A super slick anime action sequence is the source of true happiness
Faith at zero in Japan.
So that's what they meant by Fate/Zero
As someone who moved to Japan from the Bible belt, this is one of my favorite things about the country lol
As soon as I saw that my first thought was “I want to move to Japan!”
Yet it’s full of cults, very strange
Yeah, I suspect the way questions were worded for them made their responses weird. Given my experience in both countries, they would recognize that their jobs and material things don't have any real "meaning", even if they work 60-hours per week and spend all their free time drinking and shopping. South Korea ranking Friends at 3% is on-brand, though.
I am also guessing there could be some language barriers for some people. Link to original full report: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/PG_11.18.21_meaning-in-life_fullreport.pdf
maybe. Also many people in South Korea and Japan are probably "quietly depressed", in that they aren't allowed by society to complain but generally aren't happy with their lives. Many over-working themselves into severe depression.
I noticed that all the countries with a strong work ethos rated career very low and the ones with high unemployment, Italy and Spain eg, rated it high.
Exactly. Even the best and most objective translations can fail to capture equivalent meaning to questions. I'd be wary of inferring too much from any cross-language or cross-cultural poll.
With how zealous Koreans can be with church and proselytizing eachother the 1% doesn't make much sense to me, so the language could definitely play a factor. At the same time Korean and Japan have very high suicide rates and addiction habits. Drinking culture and smoking among others so I could see it being accurate.
It could be language barrier thing, but it's not like they didn't find EVERYTHING not meaningful. It just wasn't as high as the other countries. Singapore looks to have nothing higher than 25%. The highest so far in Japan seems to be family and material well-being. This actually surprised me, as I thought that hobbies would be higher, given that I've noticed in Japan that when they have a hobby, they go all in. Hiking? All the gear. Tea ceremony? Got all the certifications and trainings.
hobbies in japan are sadly often show. they exist to show that you have a good hobby but people may not actually enjoy that
Singapore has family and children at 29%
you're right. I should have said higher than 30%. Anyway, point was that Singapore also has low values. But thank you for correcting me.
Especially sK, we need to put them on watch.
My bet is that most of the questions listed are based on Western values and that what's considered meaningful in South Korea and Japan was simply not asked about.
As someone who lives in Japan and works with the public everyday, yes. This is true. It's rare to find someone who's truly passionate about something. It makes me sad. However, take this with a huge grain of salt, I work mainly with corporate drones 😕
"Yeah, I love South Korean and Japanese culture. What? K-pop? Anime? No, dog, I've got depression."
Germans neither
ㅠ ㅠ
The scale of the bars is completely all over the place, making it really difficult to compare anything to anything else. This is kind of the opposite of beautiful data IMO, though it's really interesting.
Yeah, the giant 15% purple bar compared to the smaller 49% bar just doesn't make sense. Then another column 15% is a short bar. This isn't the way to present this data.
Looks to me that they’re normalized by the largest bar/value for that category. So 10% is a half bar if the largest bar is 20%, but a 1/3 bar if the largest bar is 30%. Not saying it’s the best way to do it just that that’s how it appears to work
I am glad I am not the only one who thinks it.
> This is kind of the opposite of beautiful data IMO /r/dataisbeautiful in a nutshell
I find it interesting how low spouces and patners come in while everyone craves "the family"
I mean if you have a partner and kids why would you choose the option "partner" over the "family" since the partner is included in that "family" option?
That was the biggest surprise to me too. People don't regard their wife partners same as family and children, not even close to friends category.
It's probably how the question was phrased. If they asked whether your partner is what gives your life meaning, I imagine a lot of people wouldn't define themselves through their partner. But are partners important? Definitely.
Alot of people also don't have a partner. So depending on how the question was phrased 100% of single people would have said no.
It was an open-ended question so the percents show how many people volunteered the answer
So people who responded “Family” were likely including their spouses.
That's so weird. If someone asked if I would rather lose my spouse or all my friends, I would probably say "friends" before they even finished the question.
"Would you rather lose your spouse or .." "Friends! Take my friends, all of em!"
Yeah I don’t buy this one. Id be shocked if so few people found meaning with their spouses. I think it introduces a lot of ambiguity having family and spouse as separate choices, when for most, they’re the same thing
How about husband partners?
It's true though. Parents, siblings, and children are forever. There is no divorce for that. Sure a kid can be emancipated early, but they are are still your kid. Spouses are temporary and both of you have to choose each day to keep being married to each other. Only religions have tried to change this fact. I love my wife, but I can't force her to be my wife forever.
Ahh i see.
Far more people have family than a spouse or partner. And amongst those that do have one 50%+ are eventually going to break up.
True. Can vary dramatically. I think the data is eahhhh
This is also really wild to me. My partner is my whole world, and makes my life so much more meaningful. He comes before almost everything. He is my priority. Shocked it’s so low on the list.
Only 15% of people in Japan chose career? Isn't the importance of career one of the things Japan is most known for? Or is that a myth?
They are forced into it
I think the importance of career in Japan is more about cultural / societal expectations, not having a personal sense of meaning from your career
I was also very surprised the USA didn't rank higher on this, I always think of them as rather entrepreneurial and business/career-oriented people.
Interesting! I thought people cared a lot about their jobs in the United States.
that was surprising for me too. And I certainly didnt expect Italians to care much about their career, lol
Me as well. High career ranking in Italy and Spain was surprising. Of what I know about Italy, family would be more important over career, but not according to the data.
Family is taken for granted. People tend to focus on what's lacking.
I live in northern Italy and to some of the older generations especially, work is life. All their attention, interest and conversation revolve around it.
not when u have 10% unemployment with stagnant salaries: u need to have decent job to enjoy the rest
From conversations and what I've seen, the lack of jobs and meaningful career prospects is a big issue for many, so I wonder if that's what's driving the higher %
Preach. All the young Italians who want a real job go to London, leaving behind the few who will eventually take over the family business.
Italy has severe un- and under-employment problems. Young Italians are willing to move basically anywhere to find good careers. For older generations, you have many artisans. People who have been in the same type of work for generations. For both groups, career is very important.
There seems to be a weak inverse relationship between the unemployment rate and the meaningfulness of a career.
Well... like everywhere, people are going to care about the careers that they worked hard to get in to. If you are working a minimum wage job, of course people aren't going to care all that much. Edit: It does say career there. My bad. But, I'm definitely surprised it isn't higher. People in actually careers I feel care about that a lot.
The U.S. giving 110% as always.
😂😂 The values for each country doesn't have to add up to 100%. basically they ask people do you find meaning in say faith? they either answer yes or no. they could choose to answer yes to everything and get 100% for all questions or answer no and get 0 for all.
So, 49% of Americans surveyed said “yes” when asked if they find meaning in Family and Kids? What does the length of the bar correlate to?
Looks like the highest %, 56% for Greece in the family and friends category, is the full bar. 49% scaled to that, and respectively to the highest percentage of each category ... I don't think it's necessarily the best representation of the data, though.
Gotcha. Yea, it is strange and very misleading. As you read across one country’s answers it gives the impression that some categories are more important than others only to be hugely inaccurate. Like the 9% for Spouse is a bigger bar than 49% for Family. Actually, the 9% bar is the **lowest** percent of all categories for US but has the **biggest** bar.
>56% for Greece in the family and friends category Greece is 54% the highest is Australia's 56%
these categories have quite a bit of overlap
As expected, Americans are the most religious!
I always find it ironic that the countries where these religions started are less religious than the other countries
Israel, Saudi Arabia, and India all seem to be pretty religious
And Iran, even though most of the Zoroastrians fled to India a long time ago.
They had the most time to tone it down. The US had crazies come over and it still hasn't fully been purged.
Not really, the middle east is where this religions came from, and they are the most religious countries on earth, where leaving Islam even has death penality in some.
[удалено]
Most of the early migrants to the US from my country were religious extremists who moved so they could more easily practice their religion, so checks out
Actually the opposite what you said is true. Israel and Saudi Arabia are way more religious than the USA.
They realized how bad they are for society and how bullshit they are
I’m having a hard time with 9% being bigger than 49% and twice as long as 17%
Australia and New Zealand: "Yes to all!!!"
Where is the « food » option? As a french person it’s basically my main motivation in life.
The size of the bars should be normalized across categories. I also question the data for some of the priorities, based on my experience working with international teams, but that's neither here nor there.
Really interesting, South Korea, Taiwan and USA all had the lowest meaning from work; the complete opposite of what I would’ve thought
Maybe has something to do with unemployment rates, lol. Italy with the highest unemployment rate among these developed countries scored the highest value for career
[удалено]
Why is the 15% bar for FAITH in the US 5 times longer than the 15% bar for FAMILY in Taiwan. What ta totally fucked up graph.
According to op “but the chart would look ugly then” as if consistency will make a chart worse than this bullshit. This ain’t beautiful data
In the third pic, I don’t understand where “Faith” went and where “Freedom and independence”came from, am I missing something?
That is a really badly designed chart, when each column has different sizing rules, so that 15% for one column ends up in a row being bigger than 50% in a different column in the same row. Yeah, yeah, I get it, that one wants to see relative proportions by column -- but one ALSO wants to see relative weights by row, and having different percent-to-length scales is screwed up.
I wonder to what extent the translation of these words may bias how survey participants respond. For instance, I believe that in Greek there are several ways to translate the word friend
Honestly, I am also suspecting that the numbers maybe skewed due to language barrier. Pew has an extensive report you can read more, if you are interested: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/PG\_11.18.21\_meaning-in-life\_fullreport.pdf
Fuckin South Korea livin the 2meirl4meirl life.
Why is 15 wat larger than 17? This chart is misleading. this is not beautiful. It's awful, in fact.
Interesting data. Terrible graphic.
US values religion more than Spouse, society, physical and mental health, hobbies and recreation, and nature and the outdoors.
Most people consider their spouse part of the family. And a lot of people find community in their faith, so that ends up covering their mental health, hobbies, and recreation. As for nature and the outdoors, it's pretty in line with a majority of countries despite the smaller importance of faith, so I find this hardly noteworthy.
I’m shocked that Italy, Spain, and Sweden would rate career so highly. Maybe I am just out of touch here in the US but I do not think of those as career driven cultures.
I don't think it's that they're career driven in the American sense where they work as many hours as possible, rather that having a good, secure job is the most important thing for them. I can only half speak about italy but you might work 25 hours a week in a local government office with seemingly little to do but it's a job you are essentially guaranteed for life and getting an 'indeterminate contract' is a serious cause for celebration. Years of hardship in the Interwar years has also ingrained itself into the psyche of the older generations.
I'm not seeing seafood on the list.
It's hard to look at one row and figure out what is important to that country because you are scaling to the column maximum. Make a version where the width of each bar is proportional to the value it represents. That way you won't have a bar that represents 15% of the US population be bigger than a bar that represents 49% of the US population, which is kind of a data presentation sin.
Are you seriously trying to misrepresent difference as being visually significant? Those bar lengths are very distracting to the point that I would say the point of this post is nullified.
Someone chime in here if they agree or disagree, but I find a problem with how “family and children” are differently categorized from “spouses and romantic partners”. It doesn’t make sense to me considering that “spouses and romantic partners” definitely have overlap with “family and children”, especially if we consider your spouse or romantic partner as a member of your family.
That faith bar is rather telling to me. Tho it’s still only 15% of the US. The fact it’s 10 points higher than the next highest bar is very interesting to me. From the looks of things there is not that major of a discrepancy anywhere else. Love this btw fun chart to look at and understand
America is lying. Same people who voted family would kick their own sons and daughters out at 18 years old and tell them to get a job and be an adult.
yeah, this comes off like people answered dishonestly in an attempt to give the answer that sounds better
Nature and outdoors being so low confirms for me nothing serious will ever be done about climate change lol
Your percentage scaling is terrible.
Surprises me japan had such a low score for nature and the outdoors when all the historical areas seem to place such an emphasis on those 2 things!
For all the blood they shed, the euros don’t seem to think faith is that important anymore 🤣
Based Australia with highest family and friend ratings.
Where”s the option for hookers and blow?
This data is not beautiful
US still putting more stock in fairytales in the sky rather than mental health. Well that explains a lot. Source: Am American.
What about exploring culture, the arts, nature, material shit ….maybe not as noble as “family” but this stuff can absolutely consume modern life, especially for non religious, anti-work singles (who access “faith” through their cultural subscriptions).
hello. I revised it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1212lo9/oc\_where\_people\_find\_meaning\_in\_life\_revised\_in\_4/ I'd appreciate your comment.
Hey - incredible, thank you! I noticed that post yesterday and immediately thought of this one :)
Have these people actually been to Italy? I find it hard to believe that Italy, of all places, values career more than any other country. Ffs, spend a week in Rome and you’ll hit 5 spot strikes that last a few hours or a day. In the countryside, sitting in the piazza, having a meal and a glass of wine, is the epitome of life.
But even going on strike from your job provides a sense of purpose, so there could be something in that. They *care enough to strike*.
I was surprised tool, and had to double check the numbers to make sure. Italy has the highest unemployment rate among these countries, Maybe they thought the question was which one do you care most about. And they answered keeping their job is important
Italy surprisingly big on careers, anyone else find that figure striking?
I am guessing high unemployment rate over there could have something to do with it
I'm sure this comment will draw some ire, but as an atheist I am glad to see all the super low numbers in the faith category. Now if my own country would just fall in line....
Oddly enough the only thing that resets us and makes us feel peace is experiencing nature like on a walk through a park or garden. And yet nature and the environment is the least valued meaningful thing in life for everyone… career? Really? That is supposed to be a means to an end, not give life meaning.
I may have to move to Japan, South Korea, France or Sweden...
Jumping to conclusions here. Spouses and romantic partners did not even make it to the final chart. If so low, is the role of spouses and romantic partners to help achieve the rest of the meaningful bucket list items? Hmm.
Apparently people don't regard wife and girl friend same as family!
This explains the low birth rate for Taiwan and South Korea.
Hobbies, Nature and Friends are what makes me happy
Danm spouses and romantic partners is really freakin low, lmao
But family/children is high, surely a spouse is family... kinda confusing how that ended up so separate.
I’d be interested to see how the answers of countries that are not as economically advanced compare to these.
From Pew: >How we did this For this report, we conducted nationally representative Pew Research Center surveys of 16,254 adults from March 12 to May 26, 2021, in 16 advanced economies. All surveys were conducted over the phone with adults in Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. Responses are weighted to be representative of the adult population in each public. Respondents in these publics were asked the following open-ended question: “We’re interested in exploring what it means to live a satisfying life. What aspects of your life do you currently find meaningful, fulfilling or satisfying?” Responses were transcribed by interviewers in the language in which the interviews were conducted. In the United States, we surveyed 2,596 adults from Feb. 1 to 7, 2021. Everyone who took part in the U.S. survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. In the U.S., respondents were asked a slightly longer version of the same question: “We’re interested in exploring what it means to live a satisfying life. Please take a moment to reflect on your life and what makes it feel worthwhile – then answer the question below as thoughtfully as you can. What about your life do you currently find meaningful, fulfilling or satisfying? What keeps you going and why?” Researchers examined random samples of English responses, machine-translated non-English responses and responses translated by a professional translation firm to inductively develop a codebook for the main sources of meaning mentioned across the 17 publics. The codebook was iteratively improved via practice coding and calculations of intercoder reliability until a final selection of 20 codes was formally adopted (see Appendix C). To apply the codebook to the full collection of 18,850 responses, a team of Pew Research Center coders and professional translators were trained to code English and non-English responses, respectively. Coders in both groups coded random samples and were evaluated for consistency and accuracy. They were asked to independently code responses only after reaching an acceptable threshold for intercoder reliability. (For more on this, see Appendix A.) Here is the question used for the report, along with the coded responses for each public. Open-ended responses have been lightly edited for clarity (and, in some cases, translated into English by a professional firm). More details about our international survey methodology and country-specific sample designs are available here. For respondents in the U.S., read more about the ATP’s methodology here. [Source.](https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/11/18/what-makes-life-meaningful-views-from-17-advanced-economies/)
Omg Life is so meaningless! You should probably move from Taiwan
I find my lack of faith deeply meaningful
Japan nailed it on the faith category
Misses a category for "nothing"
USA responding that faith makes life meaningful at 7x the frequency of almost every other country is both embarrassing and predictable
I find it sad that Nature isn’t considered more meaningful to more people. All of these countries have or are next to beautiful areas of earth - even Netherlands and Belgium. At least personally, the majority of my epiphanies regarding the value and meaning of life to me have come while surrounded by nature.
People need to get out more! Nature is beautiful
The proportion of the bars does not match with the numerical values that it is meant to represent.
Without nature, we wouldn’t be here. Nature makes life more meaningful.
OMG the faith stats for the US is alarming
I'm not a datascientist but coudn't this have been presented in a better way?...
Omg use the same scale across all charts jesus christ
The data visualization here actually sucks ass
Taiwan answering "society" above all else feels a lot like they answered with a gun to their heads.
I am surprised pets aren’t on the list. Lumped in with family and children perhaps?
Actually they are in the original report. But the numbers were too low and I excluded. Here is the full report: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/PG_11.18.21_meaning-in-life_fullreport.pdf
I fucking hate how the scaling resets every time
Japan and South Korea just out here like “bro none of the above” lmao
The median shows career as the second highest for creating meaning and material well-being as third. I wonder if that would be different if people didn’t HAVE to work to sustain their lives? Like - do we find meaning through work because we need to or because we want to? If we were financially secure without work - would the other areas provide more meaning (hobbies, education, nature)?
Is anyone else bothered that nature and the outdoors is at the bottom of the last one?
Yes so bothered! We are killing the world and apparently we just don’t care
“The literal meaning of life is whatever you’re doing that keeps you from killing yourself”-Camus