Much was made of the horrors of 2016, and from the stress-inducing presidential election to major celebrity deaths, we'd have to agree that the year had some dark moments. But 2017 hasn't exactly been a cakewalk either, and if you thought that this year has actually been way worse than the last, you 're not alone, and you may not be imagining it.
A Gallup report published on Wednesday found that the overall well-being of adults in America has declined "substantially" over this past year.
Gallup defines "well-being" through a set of categories such as physical health, financial health, community involvement, a sense of purpose, and social support. Drawing data from more than 135,000 interviews with U.S. adults across all 50 states from Jan. 2 to Sept. 30, 2017, and more than 176,000 interviews each year in 2014, 2015, and 2016, the researchers found that our well-being index score dropped from 62.1 to 61.5.
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A 0.6-point drop may not seem like a huge deal, until you realize that this was Gallup's biggest reported drop since 2008, the start of the recession. As the researchers put it, "This decline is both statistically significant and meaningfully large."
Notably, Gallup researchers found that women and minorities have had a bigger drop in well-being than men and white Americans. While the score for men remained unchanged, women overall experienced a 1.1-point drop in well-being.
"Across the four major racial and ethnic groups, well-being has dropped the most among Blacks and Hispanics, although it has also come down to a lesser degree among whites and Asians," researchers found.
Since we were so able to turn the lamentable saga of 2016 into a hilarious meme, here's hoping that our senses of humor can be our saving grace once again. And if anything, you now have an entire national poll to confirm your thoughts about this year.
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