Rising stress in the world is the ‘other global warming’: Gallup CEO

Some have called the rising levels of stress and unhappiness across countries over the past decade as “the other global warming,” Gallup’s CEO Jon Clifton said at Semafor’s World Economy Summit on Wednesday.

Clifton said that Gallup polling shows that negative emotions have been rising consistently across 150 countries over the past 10 years.

He says that while the United States has maintained the same levels of unhappiness and stress among its population since 2006, other countries have since caught up, with many surpassing the U.S. in the global rankings of unhappiness.

Clifton said the reason that the U.S. has dropped from #20 in 2006 to #50 on the rankings is “not because we got less sad or less anxious” but “because the rest of the world caught up to us.”

Clifton said that one of the greatest challenges to being happy is balancing work and life and that one of the biggest challenges for leaders today is “improving the conditions of the workplace.” He estimated that at least 3 million people die working every year.

“We often joke that we’re closer to colonizing Mars than we are to fixing the world’s broken workplace,” Clifton said.