Chapter 7.2 · The ladder and the day

Life evaluation and daily feelings

Gallup respondents in the most deprived tenth of counties rate their lives 0.24 ladder points lower than those in the least deprived tenth, a gap that turns positive at the same nominal household income and is near zero or below once county rent levels are allowed for, while physical pain stays more common there under both comparisons and, across the larger counties and weighted by respondents, its county average correlates +0.65 with county deaths of despair.

Author: Vishal Singh
Affiliation: NYU Stern
Published: 9 October 2026

Gallup respondents in the most deprived tenth of counties rated their lives 0.24 (95% CI 0.18 to 0.31) ladder points lower than respondents in the least deprived tenth. At the same nominal household income, and the same age, sex, race and education, the order reverses, and the most deprived tenth scores 0.13 (95% CI 0.10 to 0.16) points higher. Allowing for local rent levels removes that difference, which becomes −0.02 (95% CI −0.05 to 0.00) points with a quintile of county rent added to the comparison, so these data cannot separate a place difference from a price difference.

Daily feelings behave differently from the ladder. Physical pain was more common in the most deprived tenth of counties by 8.8 (95% CI 7.9 to 9.7) points, by 1.8 (95% CI 1.4 to 2.3) points at the same characteristics and nominal income, and by 1.2 (95% CI 0.8 to 1.7) points with county rent also allowed for, while stress was less common there. Across 1,337 larger counties, weighting each county by its respondents, the share reporting pain correlates +0.65 (95% CI 0.61 to 0.69) with the county rate of deaths of despair, the highest of the seven feelings under every weighting and comparison this chapter tries.

The data are the Gallup U.S. Daily survey: 3,530,270 interviews from 2008 to 2017, one row per interview, with new respondents every year and no one followed over time. The extract has no survey weights, so every figure is unweighted and levels can differ from the weighted figures Gallup publishes. The unit of this chapter is the person. The deprivation measures describe the county or ZIP area where the person lives, so a comparison between tenths of places is partly a comparison between kinds of people. Every interval is a 95% interval clustered by the respondent's county.

Two kinds of question about a life

The Cantril ladder asks respondents to place their life on a ladder whose bottom rung is the worst possible life and whose top rung is the best possible one.[1] It records a judgment of a life as a whole, which is why this chapter calls it life evaluation. The extract holds that ladder and a second one for where the respondent expects to stand in the future, which this chapter calls the expected ladder. Gallup also asked whether respondents experienced each of seven feelings during a lot of the day yesterday: enjoyment, happiness, worry, stress, sadness, anger and physical pain. Those answers record a day, not a life, and the chapter calls them daily feelings. The two kinds of measure are analyzed side by side and never combined into one index.

Not every item was asked in every year (Figure 1). Both ladder items are used for 2009 to 2017. In 2008 political questions preceded the ladder, which makes life evaluation run low, and Gallup removed them for part of the sample in early January 2009 and added a transition question in April 2009.[2] The feelings are not affected and start in 2008. Enjoyment, worry, stress and pain run to 2017, happiness and sadness stop after 2016, and anger was asked from 2008 to 2013 and again in 2016. The ladder reached 85% of the interviews in 2009 and 49% of those from 2013 to 2017, when each item went to a subsample, so the pooled ladder figures weight 2009 to 2012 most. The ladder is present in 2,217,485 interviews that also have a county.

Figure 1

The ladder runs from 2009 to 2017 and the feelings from 2008, but happiness and sadness stop after 2016 and anger was not asked in 2014, 2015 or 2017

Gallup U.S. Daily items used in this chapter: the years each was asked, interviews with a county and an answer, and the share of the interviews in those years that carry the item

Item	Kind	Years asked	Interviews with an answer	Share of interviews in those years (%)
Ladder now	Life evaluation	2009 to 2017	2,217,485	70
Ladder in five years	Life evaluation	2009 to 2017	2,124,998	67
Enjoyment	Positive feeling	2008 to 2017	2,625,590	75
Happiness	Positive feeling	2008 to 2016	2,464,754	78
Worry	Negative feeling	2008 to 2017	2,629,572	75
Stress	Negative feeling	2008 to 2017	2,629,276	75
Sadness	Negative feeling	2008 to 2016	2,469,420	78
Anger	Negative feeling	2008 to 2013 and 2016	2,099,828	85
Physical pain	Negative feeling	2008 to 2017	2,629,184	75

Show data

Data for The ladder runs from 2009 to 2017 and the feelings from 2008, but happiness and sadness stop after 2016 and anger was not asked in 2014, 2015 or 2017
interviews	kind	label	share	years
2217485	Life evaluation	Ladder now	70	2009 to 2017
2124998	Life evaluation	Ladder in five years	67	2009 to 2017
2625590	Positive feeling	Enjoyment	75	2008 to 2017
2464754	Positive feeling	Happiness	78	2008 to 2016
2629572	Negative feeling	Worry	75	2008 to 2017
2629276	Negative feeling	Stress	75	2008 to 2017
2469420	Negative feeling	Sadness	78	2008 to 2016
2099828	Negative feeling	Anger	85	2008 to 2013 and 2016
2629184	Negative feeling	Physical pain	75	2008 to 2017

The ladder and the feelings were asked of the same respondents, and from 2013 each item went to a subsample, which the last column shows. Anger was asked in 2008 to 2013 and again in 2016. The table counts interviews and applies no weights.Note: The 2008 ladder answers are left out: political questions preceded the ladder in 2008 and the 2008 ladder runs low (Deaton 2012). Gallup removed the political questions for part of the sample in early January 2009 and added a transition question in April 2009. The feelings are not affected.Note: Happiness and anger each have a few stray answers in years when the item was not asked; they are dropped.Note: Feelings are answers to whether the respondent experienced the feeling during a lot of the day yesterday. The two ladder items are scored 0 to 10; the second asks where the respondent expects to stand in about five years.Source: Gallup U.S. Daily, ladder 2009-2017 and feelings 2008-2017; unweighted counts of interviews with a county

Place is attached to each respondent before any aggregation, and only aggregates are published. The county comes from the respondent's ZIP code and is approximate near county lines. 10,731 of the 3,530,270 interviews have no county and are dropped, which leaves 3,519,539 interviews in 3,142 counties. County deprivation is the mean of the Area Deprivation Index national ranks of the county's tracts, weighted by tract population, where a higher rank means more deprived. 784 interviews are in counties with no index. ZIP-area deprivation is the index for the ZCTA that carries the ZIP code's number. A ZIP code is not a ZCTA and Connecticut has no ZCTAs in the project files, so this measure covers 97.6% of the interviews. Respondents are cut into tenths of each deprivation measure, so each tenth holds about a tenth of the interviews. Household income is the respondent's reported bracket, in nominal dollars, available for 81% of the interviews.

The ladder falls with deprivation, and the fall reverses only at the same nominal income

Across tenths of county deprivation the mean ladder score falls from 7.17 (95% CI 7.11 to 7.23) in the least deprived tenth to 6.93 (95% CI 6.91 to 6.94) in the most deprived, and the point estimates fall from each tenth to the next (Figure 2). The tenths are tenths of interviews, not of counties: the least deprived holds interviews from 45 counties and the most deprived from 1,205. The ZIP-area measure gives a longer fall, from 7.29 (95% CI 7.24 to 7.34) to 6.87 (95% CI 6.85 to 6.88), a drop of 0.42 (95% CI 0.37 to 0.48) points against 0.24 (95% CI 0.18 to 0.31) for counties. A finer unit of place separates respondents further. Chapter 6.1, Place and the length of a life draws the corresponding gradient in life expectancy for tracts.

Figure 2

The ladder score is 0.24 points lower in the most deprived tenth of counties, 0.13 points higher at the same nominal household income and other characteristics, and −0.02 once county rent levels also enter

Mean Cantril ladder score by decile of the deprivation of the respondent's county and ZIP area, as interviewed and after comparing respondents within cells, with the gap at each step

The ladder score falls from 7.17 to 6.93 across deciles of county deprivation and from 7.29 to 6.87 across deciles of ZIP-area deprivation

Unweighted mean Cantril ladder score by decile of the Area Deprivation Index of the respondent's county and of the respondent's ZIP area, Gallup U.S. Daily interviews 2009 to 2017

Both lines fall from the least to the most deprived tenth, and the ZIP-area line falls further. Each point is an unweighted mean for about a tenth of interviews with a 95% interval clustered by county.

Show data

Data for The ladder score is 0.24 points lower in the most deprived tenth of counties, 0.13 points higher at the same nominal household income and other characteristics, and −0.02 once county rent levels also enter, As interviewed
conf_high	conf_low	decile	estimate	n	n_units	place
7.23	7.11	1	7.17	218,776	45	County deprivation
7.17	7.09	2	7.13	220,210	85	County deprivation
7.15	7.08	3	7.11	225,715	110	County deprivation
7.14	7.07	4	7.10	215,982	134	County deprivation
7.12	7.07	5	7.10	220,790	168	County deprivation
7.12	7.06	6	7.09	223,139	198	County deprivation
7.08	7.03	7	7.06	222,438	266	County deprivation
7.06	7.02	8	7.04	223,727	350	County deprivation
7.00	6.96	9	6.98	222,937	563	County deprivation
6.94	6.91	10	6.93	223,260	1,205	County deprivation
7.34	7.24	1	7.29	213,516	203	ZIP-area deprivation
7.24	7.15	2	7.20	215,235	343	ZIP-area deprivation
7.19	7.13	3	7.16	217,052	465	ZIP-area deprivation
7.15	7.10	4	7.13	217,305	614	ZIP-area deprivation
7.12	7.08	5	7.10	216,938	767	ZIP-area deprivation
7.07	7.03	6	7.05	217,457	964	ZIP-area deprivation
7.04	7.01	7	7.03	217,491	1,197	ZIP-area deprivation
7.00	6.97	8	6.98	217,224	1,451	ZIP-area deprivation
6.93	6.91	9	6.92	217,621	1,656	ZIP-area deprivation
6.88	6.85	10	6.87	217,263	1,806	ZIP-area deprivation

The first tab shows the ladder falling with deprivation, the second shows the same comparison among respondents with the same characteristics and nominal household income, and the third shows how the gap changes as age, sex, education, race, household income and county rent enter. Respondents are people, but the deprivation measures describe their county or ZIP area, so the comparison describes who lives where as well as what places are like, and the data cannot separate a place difference from a price difference.Note: Gallup's extract has no survey weights, so every estimate is unweighted and levels can differ from the weighted figures Gallup publishes. County comes from the respondent's ZIP code and is approximate near county lines. The ladder is the evaluative measure and the feelings are experiential measures; they are never combined into one index.Note: Deciles are cut once on every interview that has the deprivation measure, so each holds about a tenth of interviews and every item uses the same cut points. County deprivation is the mean of the tract Area Deprivation Index national ranks (1 = least deprived), weighted by tract population. The ZIP code is treated as the ZCTA of the same number, whose index is an area-weighted approximation; Connecticut has no ZCTAs in the project files and drops out of the ZIP-area line.Note: The second and third tabs use one sample at every step, the interviews that report age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent. Education has three levels and ages above the oldest five-year band share it. Household income is in nominal dollars and does not reflect differences in the cost of living across counties; the top bracket has no upper limit.Note: The rent step adds a quintile of the county's HUD two-bedroom Fair Market Rent for fiscal year 2025, which stands in for relative price levels in the interview years. Counties in a metro share the metro's rent. Where the rent is allowed for, the data cannot separate a place difference from a price difference.Source: Gallup U.S. Daily, ladder 2009-2017; unweighted, intervals clustered by county; Area Deprivation Index 2023 and ACS 2019-2023 tract population joined on the respondent's county or ZIP code; unweighted

The tenths differ in who lives in them, and the second and third tabs of the figure compare respondents only with others in the same cell of five-year age band, sex, race, education and household income bracket, using one sample at every step: the 1,759,964 interviews that report every one of those characteristics and a county rent. Education has three levels and ages above the oldest band share it; with a six-level education item the final gap is 0.13 (95% CI 0.10 to 0.16). Comparing within cells of age and sex leaves the county gap at −0.30 (95% CI −0.36 to −0.23) points, close to its starting value of −0.27 (95% CI −0.34 to −0.21) on the same interviews. Adding education narrows it to −0.11 (95% CI −0.15 to −0.07), adding race and ethnicity changes it little, and adding household income turns it to +0.13 (95% CI 0.10 to 0.16). In that comparison the adjusted mean ladder score is 7.10 (95% CI 7.08 to 7.11) in the most deprived tenth and 6.97 (95% CI 6.94 to 7.00) in the least deprived, so the ladder is 0.13 (95% CI 0.10 to 0.16) points higher in the most deprived tenth. The ZIP-area measure follows the same steps, from −0.21 (95% CI −0.25 to −0.17) with education to 0.07 (95% CI 0.04 to 0.10) higher with income.

The last step assumes that one nominal bracket means one standard of living in every county, and the data do not support that. The interviews in the least deprived tenth come from counties where the HUD two-bedroom Fair Market Rent averages $2,697 (95% CI $2,594 to $2,800) a month, against $943 (95% CI $932 to $953) in the most deprived tenth. The rents are for fiscal year 2025 and stand in for relative price levels in 2008 to 2017, and counties in a metro share one value. With a quintile of county rent added to the cells the gap is −0.02 (95% CI −0.05 to 0.00) points, and with the logarithm of rent as a linear control it is −0.04 (95% CI −0.07 to −0.01). At the ZIP-area scale the quintile version gives −0.06 (95% CI −0.09 to −0.03). Counting each county once, instead of each interview, gives +0.02 (95% CI −0.03 to 0.07). The sign of the reversal therefore depends on prices and on weighting, and the data cannot separate a place difference from a price difference. The 2008 ladder does not drive any of this: with it left in, the county drop is 0.26 (95% CI 0.19 to 0.33), the nominal-income gap +0.12 (95% CI 0.09 to 0.15), the rent-quintile gap −0.03 (95% CI −0.06 to 0.00) and the pooled income slope 0.256 (95% CI 0.252 to 0.259).

This comparison does not say that places have no bearing on how people rate their lives. Household income is one of the things a deprived place has less of, and the deprivation index is itself built from income, education, employment and housing, so comparing respondents within an income bracket removes part of what the index measures. In these data the ladder gradient across places is gone once respondents are compared with others of the same education and income, and whether a gap of the opposite sign remains depends on the price of living.

Daily feelings follow place less evenly than the ladder

The seven feelings do not share one gradient (Figure 3). Physical pain was reported by 20.8% (95% CI 20.0% to 21.7%) of respondents in the least deprived tenth of counties and 29.6% (95% CI 29.2% to 30.0%) in the most deprived, a gap of 8.8 (95% CI 7.9 to 9.7) points, and the gap is 11.0 (95% CI 10.3 to 11.7) points when places are tenths of ZIP areas. Sadness differs by 1.9 (95% CI 0.7 to 3.2) points and stress by −2.1 (95% CI −3.1 to −1.2) points, so sadness is more common in the most deprived tenth and stress is less common there. Apart from pain, no feeling differs by more than 2.1 points between the extreme tenths. Enjoyment differs by −1.2 (95% CI −2.1 to −0.4), happiness by −0.6 (95% CI −1.4 to 0.2), worry by −1.1 (95% CI −2.3 to 0.2) and anger by −0.7 (95% CI −1.7 to 0.3).

Figure 3

Physical pain is 8.8 percentage points more common in the most deprived tenth of counties, the largest gap of the seven feelings, and 1.8 at the same characteristics and 1.2 with county rent also allowed for

Difference in the share reporting each feeling a lot of the day yesterday, most deprived minus least deprived tenth of interviews by county deprivation, Gallup U.S. Daily 2008 to 2017

As interviewed
Same age, sex, race, education and nominal income
Plus county rent level

Show data

Data for Physical pain is 8.8 percentage points more common in the most deprived tenth of counties, the largest gap of the seven feelings, and 1.8 at the same characteristics and 1.2 with county rent also allowed for
basis	conf_high	conf_low	estimate	feeling	n	n_units
As interviewed	−0.350	−2.10	−1.23	Enjoyment	525,461	1,250
Same age, sex, race, education and nominal income	2.16	0.990	1.58	Enjoyment	412,511	1,249
Plus county rent level	−0.090	−1.23	−0.660	Enjoyment	412,511	1,249
As interviewed	0.200	−1.41	−0.610	Happiness	493,755	1,250
Same age, sex, race, education and nominal income	2.43	1.17	1.76	Happiness	385,768	1,249
Plus county rent level	0.150	−1.09	−0.490	Happiness	385,768	1,249
As interviewed	0.190	−2.33	−1.07	Worry	526,425	1,250
Same age, sex, race, education and nominal income	−2.78	−4.62	−3.72	Worry	413,010	1,249
Plus county rent level	1.48	−0.400	0.520	Worry	413,010	1,249
As interviewed	−1.19	−3.08	−2.13	Stress	526,330	1,250
Same age, sex, race, education and nominal income	−1.58	−3	−2.33	Stress	412,916	1,249
Plus county rent level	1.18	−0.310	0.370	Stress	412,916	1,249
As interviewed	3.19	0.660	1.93	Sadness	494,753	1,250
Same age, sex, race, education and nominal income	−0.960	−2.40	−1.73	Sadness	386,323	1,249
Plus county rent level	1.25	−0.190	0.480	Sadness	386,323	1,249
As interviewed	0.250	−1.67	−0.710	Anger	421,120	1,250
Same age, sex, race, education and nominal income	−0.630	−1.87	−1.29	Anger	326,006	1,248
Plus county rent level	1.10	−0.230	0.400	Anger	326,006	1,248
As interviewed	9.68	7.87	8.77	Physical pain	526,330	1,250
Same age, sex, race, education and nominal income	2.26	1.38	1.81	Physical pain	412,916	1,249
Plus county rent level	1.70	0.820	1.23	Physical pain	412,916	1,249

Pain and sadness are more common in the most deprived tenth, stress is less common, and the pain gap shrinks to a fraction of the raw one but stays above zero when characteristics and county rent are allowed for. Each dot is a difference in unweighted shares with a 95% interval clustered by county; the other two dots per feeling compare respondents within cells of five-year age band, sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, and then add a quintile of county rent.Note: Gallup's extract has no survey weights, so every estimate is unweighted and levels can differ from the weighted figures Gallup publishes. County comes from the respondent's ZIP code and is approximate near county lines. The ladder is the evaluative measure and the feelings are experiential measures; they are never combined into one index.Note: Each feeling is counted in the years its item was asked (see the table of items). The two adjusted dots use one sample, the interviews that report every characteristic and a county rent, so it is smaller. Deprivation is the county Area Deprivation Index, in deciles cut on all interviews. The rent is the FY2025 HUD two-bedroom Fair Market Rent of the county, a stand-in for relative price levels in 2008 to 2017.Source: Gallup U.S. Daily, 2008-2017; unweighted, intervals clustered by county; Area Deprivation Index 2023 and ACS 2019-2023 tract population joined on the respondent's county or ZIP code

Comparing respondents within cells at nominal income shrinks the pain gap to 1.8 (95% CI 1.4 to 2.3) points, so that 80% (95% CI 77% to 84%) of the raw gap lines up with who lives in each tenth, and the remainder keeps its direction. The other gaps change as well. Sadness becomes −1.7 (95% CI −2.4 to −1.0) points, worry moves from −1.1 (95% CI −2.3 to 0.2) to −3.7 (95% CI −4.6 to −2.8), anger to −1.3 (95% CI −1.9 to −0.6), and stress stays below zero at −2.3 (95% CI −3.0 to −1.6). Enjoyment and happiness move above zero, to 1.6 (95% CI 1.0 to 2.2) and 1.8 (95% CI 1.2 to 2.4). Those reversals are the nominal-income reversals of the ladder, and they go with it when county rent is allowed for. The pain gap becomes 1.2 (95% CI 0.8 to 1.7) points, 1.1 (95% CI 0.6 to 1.5) with the logarithm of rent as the control and 1.7 (95% CI 1.1 to 2.3) with each county counted once, and no other gap is above zero: enjoyment is −0.7, happiness −0.5, worry 0.5, stress 0.4, sadness 0.5 and anger 0.4, each within a point of zero. Stress is less common in the most deprived tenth as interviewed and at nominal income, and these data do not say why.

The ladder rises more steeply with income than the day does

The ladder score rises from 6.28 (95% CI 6.26 to 6.29) in the poorest household income bracket to 7.60 (95% CI 7.59 to 7.61) in the richest (Figure 4). To compare slopes across items, the figure scales each item by its own standard deviation. In those units the richest bracket sits 0.68 (95% CI 0.67 to 0.69) above the poorest on the ladder, against −0.51 (95% CI −0.52 to −0.50) for pain, −0.48 (95% CI −0.49 to −0.48) for sadness, −0.34 (95% CI −0.35 to −0.33) for worry and 0.37 (95% CI 0.37 to 0.38) for enjoyment. Stress differs by only −0.12 (95% CI −0.13 to −0.11). It is common in the poorest bracket, 43.6% (95% CI 43.4% to 43.9%) of respondents against 37.7% (95% CI 37.3% to 38.0%) in the richest, and varies by at most 2.3 points across the other five brackets. Pain falls from 37.8% (95% CI 37.4% to 38.3%) of respondents in the poorest bracket to 16.1% (95% CI 15.9% to 16.3%) in the richest.

Figure 4

The richest income bracket scores 0.68 standard deviations above the poorest on the ladder and −0.51 on physical pain, but only −0.12 on stress

Unweighted mean of each item in standard deviations of the item, by household income bracket, Gallup U.S. Daily interviews (ladder 2009 to 2017, feelings 2008 to 2017)

Standard deviations from the item's mean

Show data

Data for The richest income bracket scores 0.68 standard deviations above the poorest on the ladder and −0.51 on physical pain, but only −0.12 on stress
Item	Income bracket (1 = lowest)	Mean in standard deviations	Raw mean (ladder points or share reporting)	Respondents
Ladder now	1	−0.41	627.82	373,989
Ladder now	2	−0.19	670.23	241,269
Ladder now	3	−0.07	693.71	209,896
Ladder now	4	0.02	711.83	194,839
Ladder now	5	0.12	729.75	333,711
Ladder now	6	0.27	760.19	453,101
Enjoyment	1	−0.26	76.78	440,439
Enjoyment	2	−0.05	84.03	282,706
Enjoyment	3	0.02	86.46	247,271
Enjoyment	4	0.05	87.63	227,521
Enjoyment	5	0.09	88.86	390,056
Enjoyment	6	0.11	89.82	527,783
Worry	1	0.26	40.73	441,514
Worry	2	0.06	31.70	283,002
Worry	3	−0.01	28.55	247,491
Worry	4	−0.05	26.87	227,727
Worry	5	−0.07	25.75	390,212
Worry	6	−0.08	25.45	528,050
Stress	1	0.15	43.64	441,398
Stress	2	0.02	37.17	283,002
Stress	3	−0.01	35.66	247,449
Stress	4	−0.02	35.36	227,700
Stress	5	−0.01	35.77	390,164
Stress	6	0.03	37.67	528,004
Sadness	1	0.33	28.83	419,214
Sadness	2	0.07	19.08	266,659
Sadness	3	−0.02	15.85	235,369
Sadness	4	−0.07	13.85	214,543
Sadness	5	−0.12	12.12	363,770
Sadness	6	−0.15	10.83	479,863
Physical pain	1	0.32	37.82	441,363
Physical pain	2	0.10	28.12	282,945
Physical pain	3	0.01	24.35	247,422
Physical pain	4	−0.06	21.60	227,696
Physical pain	5	−0.12	19.07	390,175
Physical pain	6	−0.18	16.11	528,048

The ladder rises most steeply with income, pain and sadness fall, enjoyment rises less, and stress changes little above the poorest bracket. Each point is an unweighted mean with a 95% interval clustered by county; the data table gives the raw ladder scores and shares.Note: Gallup's extract has no survey weights, so every estimate is unweighted and levels can differ from the weighted figures Gallup publishes. County comes from the respondent's ZIP code and is approximate near county lines. The ladder is the evaluative measure and the feelings are experiential measures; they are never combined into one index.Note: Each item is scaled by its own mean and standard deviation over all respondents with the item, so the lines compare slopes, not levels, and the ladder is not combined with the feelings. Happiness and anger, asked in fewer years, are left out of this chart. The top bracket has no upper limit, so the chart cannot show whether an item flattens at higher incomes. Household income is reported for most but not all interviews, and brackets are in nominal dollars.Source: Gallup U.S. Daily, ladder 2009-2017 and feelings 2008-2017; unweighted, intervals clustered by county; household income is the respondent's reported bracket

Kahneman and Deaton found a similar split in the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index: life evaluation kept rising with the logarithm of income, while a measure of emotional well-being rose with income and showed no further progress above about $75,000 a year.[3] Killingsworth, Kahneman and Mellers later reconciled that result with experience-sampling data in which well-being kept rising with income for most people and flattened above about $100,000 a year only for an unhappy minority.[4] The top bracket in the Gallup extract starts at $90,000, so these data cannot show whether any item flattens at higher incomes.

The expected ladder rises with income as the ladder now does, from 6.98 (95% CI 6.95 to 7.02) in the poorest bracket to 8.11 (95% CI 8.10 to 8.12) in the richest. Graham and Pinto, using Gallup surveys, report that optimism differs most by race and place among low-income Americans.[5]

The income gradient is nearly the same in every kind of county

The ladder's income gradient is nearly the same in all three bands of county deprivation (Figure 5). Across all respondents the ladder rises 0.250 (95% CI 0.246 to 0.253) points for each step up the six income brackets. With county fixed effects, which compare each respondent only with others in the same county, it rises 0.251 (95% CI 0.247 to 0.255) points per step. Within any one income bracket, the three bands of counties differ by at most 0.12 points in the mean ladder score. In the poorest bracket the most deprived three tenths of counties score −0.09 (95% CI −0.13 to −0.05) points relative to the least deprived three tenths, and in the richest bracket 0.03 (95% CI 0.01 to 0.05).

Figure 5

The income gradient of the ladder is nearly the same in all three bands of counties, 0.250 points per bracket across respondents and 0.251 within counties

Mean ladder score and share reporting physical pain by household income bracket, in three bands of county deprivation, Gallup U.S. Daily interviews (ladder 2009 to 2017, pain 2008 to 2017)

Within each household income bracket, the ladder score differs by at most 0.12 points across three bands of county deprivation

Unweighted mean ladder score by household income bracket, in three bands of county deprivation (tenths 1 to 3, 4 to 7 and 8 to 10 of interviews), Gallup U.S. Daily 2009 to 2017

The three lines run almost on top of one another and rise together with income; the income gradient does not depend on how deprived the county is. Each point is an unweighted mean with a 95% interval clustered by county.

Show data

Data for The income gradient of the ladder is nearly the same in all three bands of counties, 0.250 points per bracket across respondents and 0.251 within counties, Ladder score
bracket	conf_high	conf_low	estimate	n	n_units	place
1	6.37	6.29	6.33	86,715	237	Least deprived three tenths of counties
2	6.72	6.67	6.69	58,576	236	Least deprived three tenths of counties
3	6.92	6.88	6.90	54,352	238	Least deprived three tenths of counties
4	7.08	7.03	7.06	54,434	236	Least deprived three tenths of counties
5	7.26	7.21	7.24	105,652	238	Least deprived three tenths of counties
6	7.60	7.57	7.58	183,790	237	Least deprived three tenths of counties
1	6.31	6.26	6.29	139,826	763	Middle four tenths
2	6.72	6.68	6.70	95,714	763	Middle four tenths
3	6.95	6.91	6.93	85,958	761	Middle four tenths
4	7.14	7.10	7.12	80,130	760	Middle four tenths
5	7.32	7.29	7.30	137,439	763	Middle four tenths
6	7.63	7.60	7.61	178,686	763	Middle four tenths
1	6.26	6.22	6.24	147,372	2,109	Most deprived three tenths
2	6.72	6.69	6.71	86,910	2,104	Most deprived three tenths
3	6.99	6.95	6.97	69,541	2,092	Most deprived three tenths
4	7.19	7.15	7.17	60,226	2,078	Most deprived three tenths
5	7.37	7.34	7.36	90,515	2,097	Most deprived three tenths
6	7.63	7.60	7.62	90,545	2,090	Most deprived three tenths

The first tab compares the ladder score across brackets and county bands, and the second does the same for physical pain. Respondents in the same bracket sit at nearly the same ladder score in any band of counties, while pain separates the bands in the poorest bracket.Note: Gallup's extract has no survey weights, so every estimate is unweighted and levels can differ from the weighted figures Gallup publishes. County comes from the respondent's ZIP code and is approximate near county lines. The ladder is the evaluative measure and the feelings are experiential measures; they are never combined into one index.Note: Bands cut the deprivation deciles into the least deprived three, the middle four and the most deprived three tenths of interviews by county Area Deprivation Index. The slopes are coefficients of the ladder score on the bracket number (1 to 6) with errors clustered on county; the second has county fixed effects. Brackets are not equal in dollar width.Source: Gallup U.S. Daily, ladder 2009-2017 and feelings 2008-2017; unweighted, intervals clustered by county; Area Deprivation Index 2023 and ACS 2019-2023 tract population joined on the respondent's county or ZIP code

Counties hold very little of the variation. The share of the variance in the ladder score that lies between counties, with states included, is 0.51% (95% CI 0.46% to 0.56%), and the rest lies between people in the same county. Chapter 10.1, Gradients, slopes and variance splits the variance of tract life expectancy, where states hold 13.7% and counties within states 15.9%, together 29.7% (the parts are rounded). The two shares are not strictly comparable, because a tract mean averages many people and a ladder score is one person's answer, so the county share of life expectancy would fall if it were measured for people.

Pain separates the bands, mostly among the poorest. In the poorest bracket pain is 6.6 (95% CI 5.7 to 7.5) points more common in the most deprived three tenths of counties than in the least deprived three tenths, and in the richest bracket 1.7 (95% CI 1.2 to 2.1) points.

Causal evidenceRandomized housing-voucher experiment

Whether an offer to move to a less poor neighborhood changes how happy adults say they are

The comparisons above are between different people, so they cannot say what a place does to the people in it. The Moving to Opportunity experiment assigned low-income families in public housing in five cities, by lottery, to be offered a voucher usable only in a lower-poverty neighborhood, to be offered an unrestricted voucher, or to stay where they were. Ludwig and coauthors surveyed the adults a decade or more later. Pooled over the two voucher groups, the offer of a move to a less disadvantaged area raised a standardized answer to one question about how happy things are these days by 0.098 (95% CI 0.022 to 0.174) standard deviations, with no detectable change in adult economic self-sufficiency.[6]

That is the effect of an offer, not of a move, on one happiness question asked of adults who began in public housing in very poor neighborhoods, and the estimate is small. It shows that an offer to move to a lower-poverty neighborhood can change a self-reported well-being measure without changing income. It does not cover the ladder or daily feelings, and it does not say how much of the gradient across Gallup counties is a place effect.

The ladder and the day move together, modestly across people and more tightly across counties

Respondents who reported happiness during a lot of the day yesterday rated their lives 1.57 (95% CI 1.55 to 1.59) ladder points higher than those who did not, and respondents who reported enjoyment rated them 1.46 (95% CI 1.44 to 1.47) higher (Figure 6). Those who reported sadness rated their lives 1.33 (95% CI 1.32 to 1.35) points lower, and those who reported physical pain 0.91 (95% CI 0.90 to 0.93) lower. Correlations are smaller than these gaps suggest, since enjoyment was reported by 86% of respondents and sadness by only 17%. Across respondents the ladder correlates +0.26 (95% CI 0.26 to 0.26) with enjoyment, −0.28 (95% CI −0.28 to −0.28) with worry, the strongest of the seven, −0.20 (95% CI −0.20 to −0.20) with pain and −0.18 (95% CI −0.18 to −0.18) with anger, the weakest.

Figure 6

Across respondents the ladder correlates −0.28 with worry and +0.26 with enjoyment, and across county means it moves together with most feelings more tightly

Cantril ladder scores against feelings yesterday, by whether the respondent reported each feeling, and the correlation of the two across respondents and across county means

Respondents who reported happiness rated their lives 1.57 ladder points higher, and those who reported sadness rated them 1.33 lower

Unweighted mean ladder score of respondents who did and did not report each feeling a lot of the day yesterday, Gallup U.S. Daily (ladder 2009 to 2017, feelings 2008 to 2017)

Did not report the feeling
Reported the feeling

Positive feelings go with higher ladder scores and negative feelings with lower ones, for every feeling. Each dot is an unweighted mean with a 95% interval clustered by county.

Show data

Data for Across respondents the ladder correlates −0.28 with worry and +0.26 with enjoyment, and across county means it moves together with most feelings more tightly, Ladder by feeling reported
feeling	group	n_no	n_yes	no	no_hi	no_lo	yes	yes_hi	yes_lo
Enjoyment	Positive feelings	310,895	1,900,405	5.82	5.84	5.80	7.28	7.29	7.27
Happiness	Positive feelings	230,060	1,821,129	5.67	5.69	5.65	7.24	7.25	7.23
Worry	Negative feelings	1,573,559	640,621	7.42	7.43	7.41	6.22	6.24	6.20
Stress	Negative feelings	1,407,513	806,482	7.43	7.44	7.43	6.44	6.46	6.42
Sadness	Negative feelings	1,713,579	341,114	7.29	7.29	7.28	5.95	5.97	5.93
Anger	Negative feelings	1,483,704	202,942	7.18	7.19	7.17	6.11	6.13	6.09
Physical pain	Negative feelings	1,677,403	536,374	7.29	7.30	7.28	6.38	6.39	6.37

The first tab compares ladder scores of respondents who did and did not report each feeling, and the second gives the correlations. Both are patterns across people or across county averages, and neither shows that a feeling changes a life rating or the reverse.Note: Gallup's extract has no survey weights, so every estimate is unweighted and levels can differ from the weighted figures Gallup publishes. County comes from the respondent's ZIP code and is approximate near county lines. The ladder is the evaluative measure and the feelings are experiential measures; they are never combined into one index.Note: The ladder and the feelings were asked of the same respondents, so the comparison uses interviews with both answers. County means need at least the county floor of respondents with each item. Anger is asked in fewer years than the other feelings (see the table of items).Source: Gallup U.S. Daily, ladder 2009-2017 and feelings 2008-2017; unweighted, intervals clustered by county

Across counties the pairs move together more tightly. The county mean ladder correlates +0.59 (95% CI 0.56 to 0.63) with the county share reporting enjoyment, −0.62 (95% CI −0.66 to −0.58) with pain, −0.57 (95% CI −0.61 to −0.53) with sadness and −0.20 (95% CI −0.26 to −0.14) with stress, the one feeling whose county correlation is not larger than its correlation across respondents. County means need at least 100 respondents with each item. Averaging to counties removes variation between people, and a stronger correlation between averages is the usual result of doing so. It says nothing about how closely any one person's life rating and day are linked.

The measures also differ in what they follow. The ladder rises with income more steeply than any feeling does, and pain tracks both income and county deprivation, while stress follows neither much. The ladder answers a question about a life and the feelings answer a question about a day, and they share a direction without sharing a shape. Chapter 7.1, Civic life, loneliness and partnership uses the same ladder to compare partnered and other adults, and Chapter 8.2, Well-being across the life span takes up how the ladder and the feelings change with age, which this chapter holds fixed.

Pain is the feeling that tracks county deaths of despair

Felt despair is not an item in the Gallup survey. This chapter reads it from the items Gallup does ask: the pain, sadness, worry and stress that respondents reported for yesterday, and the ladder now and the expected ladder. The comparison is with the county rate of deaths of despair for 2015, from the Joint Economic Committee's compilation of CDC data for larger counties. Deaths of despair, in Case and Deaton's term, are deaths from suicide, drugs and alcohol.[7] Case and Deaton documented rising reports of chronic pain alongside rising mortality from suicide, drugs and alcohol among middle-aged white non-Hispanic Americans from 1999 to 2013.[8] Chapter 6.3, Overdose, alcohol and suicide maps the deaths themselves.

The Joint Economic Committee's file keeps the 2015 rate as a cross-check series, and it does not document the rate's population base or whether it is age adjusted. It is used here because it is the only county rate from the Gallup years, and it can be checked against CDC WONDER. On counties whose drug, alcohol and suicide counts are published in every year from 2018 to 2023, the complete counties of the chapter on overdose, alcohol and suicide, the two rates correlate +0.81 (95% CI 0.77 to 0.84) across 534 counties, weighted by respondents. The WONDER rate sums three crude rates, includes suicides by drug poisoning in both the drug and the suicide rate, and comes a decade after the interviews. The county share reporting pain correlates +0.69 (95% CI 0.64 to 0.74) with the Joint Economic Committee rate on those counties and +0.58 (95% CI 0.51 to 0.64) with the WONDER rate, and the share reporting stress −0.14 (95% CI −0.23 to −0.05) with the WONDER rate.

Respondents in the lowest fifth of the county rate reported physical pain at 20.2% (95% CI 19.8% to 20.6%) and respondents in the highest fifth at 26.8% (95% CI 26.3% to 27.3%), a difference of 6.6 (95% CI 6.0 to 7.3) points, and the share rises at each step (Figure 7). The ladder falls from 7.15 (95% CI 7.12 to 7.18) to 7.00 (95% CI 6.98 to 7.02). The share reporting stress hardly moves, 37.4% (95% CI 36.9% to 37.9%) in the lowest fifth and 36.4% (95% CI 36.1% to 36.8%) in the highest.

Figure 7

Physical pain is the feeling most closely tied to the county deaths-of-despair rate under every weighting and comparison, with a correlation of +0.65 across counties

Feelings and life ratings of Gallup U.S. Daily respondents against the deaths-of-despair rate of their county (ladder 2009 to 2017, feelings 2008 to 2017)

The share reporting physical pain rises from 20.2% to 26.8% across fifths of the county deaths-of-despair rate, while stress stays near 37.4%

Unweighted share reporting each feeling a lot of the day yesterday, by fifth of interviews ranked by the deaths-of-despair rate of the respondent's county, Gallup U.S. Daily 2008 to 2017

The pain line rises at every step, sadness drifts up and stress is nearly level. Each point is an unweighted share for the interviews in that fifth, in counties that have a rate, with a 95% interval clustered by county.

Show data

Data for Physical pain is the feeling most closely tied to the county deaths-of-despair rate under every weighting and comparison, with a correlation of +0.65 across counties, By fifth of the county rate
conf_high	conf_low	estimate	measure	n	n_units	quintile
20.55	19.78	20.16	Physical pain	465,440	150	1
22.69	21.60	22.15	Physical pain	466,441	190	2
24.28	23.45	23.86	Physical pain	474,417	278	3
25.77	24.80	25.28	Physical pain	470,320	277	4
27.32	26.27	26.80	Physical pain	474,232	446	5
16.44	15.29	15.86	Sadness	434,567	150	1
17.05	15.38	16.22	Sadness	436,885	190	2
16.51	15.98	16.25	Sadness	445,971	278	3
17.36	16.76	17.06	Sadness	442,076	277	4
17.72	17.18	17.45	Sadness	447,105	446	5
37.92	36.88	37.40	Stress	465,362	150	1
37.34	36.25	36.79	Stress	466,398	190	2
36.39	35.62	36	Stress	474,426	278	3
36.50	35.85	36.17	Stress	470,344	277	4
36.83	36.06	36.45	Stress	474,370	446	5

The first tab shows respondents sorted by the county rate and the second gives the correlation of each county mean with the rate. Counties are the unit in the second tab, so it describes places and not the people who report pain.Note: Gallup's extract has no survey weights, so every estimate is unweighted and levels can differ from the weighted figures Gallup publishes. County comes from the respondent's ZIP code and is approximate near county lines. The ladder is the evaluative measure and the feelings are experiential measures; they are never combined into one index.Note: The deaths-of-despair rate is a single 2015 cross-section covering the larger counties (suicide, alcohol and drug deaths, CDC multiple cause of death, compiled by the Joint Economic Committee). The file keeps it as a cross-check series and does not document its population base or age adjustment, so it is used here only to rank counties; the text checks it against CDC WONDER rates for 2018 to 2023. Fifths are cut on interviews in counties with a rate.Note: County means need a floor of respondents with each item, and the same counties enter every dot. The third dot of each row compares respondents within cells of five-year age band, sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket before averaging to counties, so it uses interviews that report every characteristic.Source: Gallup U.S. Daily, ladder 2009-2017 and feelings 2008-2017; unweighted, intervals clustered by county; county deaths of despair from the Joint Economic Committee compilation of CDC data for 2015

The second tab compares county averages with the rate. With counties weighted by their respondents, the county share reporting pain correlates +0.65 (95% CI 0.61 to 0.69) with the rate, the ladder now −0.40 (95% CI −0.47 to −0.33), the expected ladder −0.54 (95% CI −0.60 to −0.49) and sadness +0.31 (95% CI 0.20 to 0.41). Worry (+0.06 (95% CI −0.05 to 0.17)) and stress (−0.09 (95% CI −0.17 to −0.01)) barely correlate. Counting each county once changes that: worry rises to +0.36 (95% CI 0.29 to 0.45), stress to +0.19 (95% CI 0.11 to 0.28) and sadness to +0.45 (95% CI 0.39 to 0.52), while pain remains the strongest at +0.58 (95% CI 0.54 to 0.63). Correlations that give every county equal weight are dominated by the many small counties, and those weighted by respondents by the large ones, so the statement that stress and worry do not follow the despair map holds for the counties where most respondents live and not for all counties.

County averages also mix places with people. Respondents in the highest fifth of the rate average 55.5 (95% CI 55.1 to 56.0) years of age against 51.9 (95% CI 51.3 to 52.5) in the lowest. Comparing respondents within cells of age and sex before averaging to counties leaves the pain correlation at +0.62 (95% CI 0.58 to 0.66), so age and sex do not account for it. Comparing within cells of age, sex, race, education and household income brings it to +0.43 (95% CI 0.38 to 0.48), still the highest of the feelings and the only negative feeling whose interval stays above zero. The correlation of the ladder changes sign to +0.14 (95% CI 0.07 to 0.22) in that comparison, which includes household income and education, while the comparison on age and sex alone leaves it at −0.47 (95% CI −0.53 to −0.40). Pain remains tied to the county rate of deaths of despair after respondents are compared on age, sex, race, education and household income, and no other negative feeling does.

What these data cannot show

The unit of the chapter is the person, but the place measures describe counties and ZIP areas, so a gap between tenths of places mixes the places with the people in them. Comparing respondents within cells handles only the characteristics the survey records. It does not handle health, disability, work or family, which go with pain. Household income is in nominal dollars and the rent file is a single fiscal year 2025 standard shared within metros, so the price comparison is a rough proxy, and neither it nor the nominal comparison identifies what places do to residents. The randomized Moving to Opportunity experiment is the evidence on that question, and it covers neither the ladder nor these feelings.

The survey has no weights, and the interviews are a repeated cross-section, not a panel, so the chapter shows differences between people and not changes within them. Pooled figures weight 2009 to 2012 most for the ladder and 2008 to 2012 for the feelings, and the chapter does not remove differences between years. Each feeling is a yes or no answer to whether the respondent had it during a lot of the day yesterday, which records neither intensity nor duration, and the ladder is a whole-number rating whose rungs different people may anchor differently. Answers given in one interview can color each other, as the 2008 ladder shows, and the survey does not let us separate that for the other items.

The county is derived from the ZIP code and is approximate near county lines. ZIP-area deprivation treats a ZIP code as the ZCTA of the same number and drops Connecticut. County deprivation is built from Area Deprivation Index ranks that include income and education, so the index overlaps with the respondent characteristics used in the comparisons. The index is the 2023 release, built on ACS data for 2019 to 2023, and the interviews are from 2008 to 2017, which assumes that the ranking of places persisted. The deaths-of-despair rate is a single year for larger counties, a cross-check series with an undocumented population base and age adjustment, and its correlations are across counties, so they do not show that the people who report pain are the people who die.

Chapter 7.3, Mental distress in young adults measures frequent mental distress in a different survey with survey weights, and its estimates are not directly comparable with the unweighted Gallup levels here.

Data sources

Gallup U.S. Daily PollGallup U.S. Daily tracking poll: Cantril ladder now and in five years (2009-2017) and seven feelings yesterday (2008-2017), household income, age, sex, race and education; aggregates onlyYears: 2008-2017 · Weights: none (unweighted) · License: Proprietary Gallup microdata; respondent-level rows are not published
Area Deprivation IndexArea Deprivation Index 2023, national rank: tract ranks averaged to counties, and ZCTA ranks joined on the respondent's ZIP codeYears: 2023 release (version 4.0.1; built on ACS 2019-2023) · Weights: 2019-2023 tract population for counties · License: Free for non-commercial use; cite the Neighborhood Atlas and Kind and Buckingham
American Community SurveyACS 2019-2023 tract population, the weight for county deprivationYears: 2019-2023 (5-year) · Weights: 2019-2023 tract population · License: Public domain (U.S. Census Bureau)
JEC Social Capital IndexCounty rate of deaths of despair for 2015 (CDC multiple cause of death), as compiled by the Joint Economic Committee for 1,341 larger counties: a cross-check series whose population base and age adjustment are not documentedYears: 2018 release (components from about 2010-2016) · Weights: none (county rate) · License: Public domain (U.S. Government work, Joint Economic Committee)
CDC WONDER underlying cause of deathCDC WONDER underlying cause of death: county drug, alcohol and suicide counts and populations, 2018-2023, complete counties only, to check the JEC rateYears: 2018-2024 · Weights: none (crude rates from counts) · License: Public domain (NCHS, CDC); WONDER data-use restrictions apply
USALEEP life expectancyLife expectancy at birth, 2010-2015 deaths, 2020 tracts: the canonical variance split among states, counties and tracts, quoted from the chapter that owns itYears: 2010-2015 · Weights: 2019-2023 tract population · License: Public domain (NCHS, CDC)
Published estimates from cited studiesOne estimate from the Moving to Opportunity experiment (Ludwig and coauthors 2012) and two income thresholds from Kahneman and Deaton (2010) and Killingsworth and coauthors (2023), quoted beside their citationsYears: as reported in each study · Weights: as in the papers · License: Quoted from published research for commentary
HUD Fair Market RentsHUD Fair Market Rents, fiscal year 2025, two-bedroom, by FMR area averaged to counties: a stand-in for relative price levels in the interview yearsYears: fiscal year 2025 (October 2024 to September 2025) · Weights: none (one rent per FMR area) · License: Public domain (U.S. federal)

All data sources

Methods

This chapter compares Gallup interviewees across tenths of county deprivation, first as they are and then within cells of age, sex, race, education and household income. The extract has no survey weights, so every estimate is unweighted, and an interval around an unweighted average does not make it nationally representative. The ladder gap between the most and least deprived tenths changes sign with the income measure: it turns positive at the same nominal household income and is near zero or below once county rent levels are allowed for. The ladder and the feelings are asked in different years and are never combined.

Interview sample

Gallup respondent rows are read inside Box and aggregated; nothing at respondent level is published. Every Gallup estimate is unweighted, because the extract has no survey weights, and levels can differ from the weighted figures Gallup publishes.

Every comparison within cells uses one sample, the interviews that report every cell variable and a county rent, so the cell means come from the same interviews at every step.

Questions and years

The ladder is scored 0 to 10; the second ladder item asks where the respondent expects to stand in about five years. Both ladder items are cut to 2009 to 2017, because political questions preceded the ladder in 2008 and the 2008 ladder runs low (Deaton 2012; Gallup removed the questions for part of the sample in early January 2009 and added a transition question in April 2009). The ladder is asked of nearly all respondents in 2010 to 2012, of 85% in 2009 and of 49% from 2013 to 2017, so the pooled ladder figures weight 2009 to 2012 most.

Feelings are answers (yes or no) to whether the respondent experienced the feeling during a lot of the day yesterday. The feelings are not affected by the 2008 question order and keep 2008, so the pooled feelings figures weight 2008 to 2012 most. Each item is counted in the years it was asked, which are listed in the item-coverage figure, and a few stray answers in years when an item was not asked are dropped.

The ladder and the feelings are never combined into one index.

Figure explained here: Figure 1

County assignment

The county of an interview comes from the respondent's ZIP code and is approximate near county lines; interviews with no county are dropped.

County deprivation is the mean of the Area Deprivation Index 2023 national ranks of a county's tracts, weighted by 2019-2023 tract population (Connecticut tracts move to the eight legacy counties, the retired Alaska and South Dakota codes move to their successors, Puerto Rico is excluded, and the split county of Valdez-Cordova has no value). ZIP-area deprivation is the 2023 ZCTA national rank of the ZIP code's number, an area-weighted approximation; a ZIP code is not a ZCTA, the ZIP-to-ZCTA crosswalk is not staged, and Connecticut has no ZCTAs. Deciles of deprivation are cut once on every interview that has the measure, so each holds about a tenth of interviews.

County means for the correlations need at least 100 respondents with the item, and the same counties enter every row. The deaths-of-despair rate is a single 2015 cross-section for the larger counties, joined on the county code. The Joint Economic Committee's file keeps it as a cross-check series and does not document its population base or age adjustment, so the chapter checks it against CDC WONDER: on counties whose drug, alcohol and suicide counts are published in every year 2018 to 2023 (complete counties, as in the chapter on overdose, alcohol and suicide), the two rates correlate +0.81 across 534 counties; the WONDER rate sums three crude rates and includes suicides by drug poisoning in both the drug and the suicide rate.

Adjusted comparisons

Comparing respondents within cells subtracts from each respondent's value the mean of everyone in the same cell (five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket) and adds the overall mean; the adjusted group means then compare like with like. Education has three levels in the cells (a six-level item gives 0.13 for the main comparison, against +0.13 with three levels) and ages above the oldest five-year band share it.

The sign of the ladder gap depends on how income is measured. Household income is the harmonized six-bracket variable, in nominal dollars; the top bracket has no upper limit. The price sensitivities add a quintile of the county's HUD two-bedroom Fair Market Rent for fiscal year 2025, or its logarithm as a linear control, to the cells; counties in a metro share one rent, New England towns are averaged to legacy counties with HUD's 2022 population, and the FY2025 rent stands in for relative price levels in the interview years.

The equal-county version averages the cell-adjusted values within each county and then compares the means of counties with at least the survey floor of interviews, each county counted once, with a bootstrap over counties.

Figure explained here: Figure 2

Uncertainty

Intervals for means, shares and differences are 95% intervals clustered by county (t distribution with the number of counties minus one). A bootstrap over counties resamples whole counties to see how much an estimate varies; the correlations across counties, the intraclass correlation and the share of a gap that adjustment removes use a bootstrap over whole counties with 2,000 draws (seed 12345, shared draws within a statistic). The intraclass correlation is the one-way ANOVA estimator.

References

Cantril, Hadley (1965). The Pattern of Human Concerns. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ.
Deaton, Angus (2012). The financial crisis and the well-being of Americans: 2011 OEP Hicks Lecture. Oxford Economic Papers 64(1): 1-26. doi:10.1093/oep/gpr051
Kahneman, Daniel; Deaton, Angus (2010). High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(38): 16489-16493. doi:10.1073/pnas.1011492107
Killingsworth, Matthew A.; Kahneman, Daniel; Mellers, Barbara (2023). Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120(10): e2208661120. doi:10.1073/pnas.2208661120
Graham, Carol; Pinto, Sergio (2019). Unequal hopes and lives in the USA: optimism, race, place, and premature mortality. Journal of Population Economics 32(2): 665-733. doi:10.1007/s00148-018-0687-y
Ludwig, Jens; Duncan, Greg J.; Gennetian, Lisa A.; Katz, Lawrence F.; Kessler, Ronald C.; Kling, Jeffrey R.; Sanbonmatsu, Lisa (2012). Neighborhood effects on the long-term well-being of low-income adults. Science 337(6101): 1505-1510. doi:10.1126/science.1224648
Case, Anne; Deaton, Angus (2020). Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Case, Anne; Deaton, Angus (2015). Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112(49): 15078-15083. doi:10.1073/pnas.1518393112

How to cite

@misc{singh2026lifeevaluationanddailyfeelings,
  author = {Singh, Vishal},
  title = {Life evaluation and daily feelings},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings},
  note = {In ZIP Code Destiny. Published 9 October 2026.}
}

Same question at another grain

These chapters take up the same axis with a different unit of analysis.

Well-being and life expectancy
- Chapter 6.1, Place and the length of a life Neighborhoods
Despair
- Chapter 6.3, Overdose, alcohol and suicide Counties