Life satisfaction is more strongly correlated with flourishing than Cantril’s Ladder

Policymakers and scholars alike seek an informative single-item measure of subjective well-being. Two prominently used single-item measures are life satisfaction--as used by the World Values Survey, General Social Survey, and Australia's Measuring What Matters framework, etc.--and Cantril's Ladder--as used in the World Happiness Report. We compare these single-item assessments using data from the Global Flourishing Study, which includes over 200,000 participants in 22 countries. We find that life satisfaction is, on average, more strongly correlated with happiness, health, meaning, character, relationships, and financial security than is Cantril's Ladder. This result held in all 22 countries when all dimensions of flourishing are examined simultaneously. However, Cantril's Ladder had stronger correlations with financial aspects of well-being in several countries. Life satisfaction provides a comprehensive single-item assessment of overall subjective well-being.