This week, in honor of Valentine's Day, the Philippine government sponsored mass-wedding ceremonies for hundreds of couples. It seemed fitting for a country that marked Valentine's Day 10 years ago by setting a world record for the number of couples simultaneously kissing for 10 seconds (the final tally: 5,122). And it's also appropriate for a country where a whopping 93 percent of people report feeling loved.
That last stat comes from what the economist Justin Wolfers has described as "the most comprehensive global index of love ever constructed." In 2006 and 2007, Gallup asked people in 136 countries whether they had experienced love the previous day. The researchers found that on a typical day, roughly 70 percent of the world's population reports feeling love. The world leader in love turned out to be the Philippines, where more than 90 percent said they had experienced love, and the world's laggard Armenia, where only 29 percent of respondents did. In the United States, 81 percent replied in the affirmative. (Click on the map to expand it.)
The map offers some broad lessons. Love appears to be flourishing in the Americas, achieving mixed results in Africa, and languishing in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. But Wolfers cautions against reading too much into the data. "[D]ifferences between countries may be due to how cultures define 'love' and not in actual day-to-day experiences," he writes. "For example, in some countries, the idea of 'love' is restricted to a romantic partner, while in others it extends to one's family members and friends."
Wolfers and his wife, the economist Betsey Stevenson, crunched the global data and arrived at some fascinating conclusions, including that feeling loved peaks when people are in their mid-30s or mid-40s, and that unmarried couples who live together report getting more love than married spouses. But perhaps their most interesting findings involved the complex relationship between money and love:
What’s perhaps more striking is how little money matters on a global level. True, the populations of richer countries are, on average, slightly more likely to feel loved than those of poorer countries. But love is still abundant in the poorer countries: People in Rwanda and the Philippines enjoyed the highest love ratios, with more than 9 in 10 people providing positive responses. Armenia, Uzbekistan, Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan, with economic output per person in the middle of the range, all had love ratios of less than 4 in 10.
Still, the truly remarkable stage of the research came when a commenter looked at their effort to plot the love data against GDP per capita to see whether there was a relationship between feeling loved and economic development. The reader pointed out that the data points clustered together to form a heart shape.
OK, so it's a bit of a stretch. But a year later, Wolfers is still marveling at the Valentine's Day miracle:
This chart reveals the most amazing (non-linear) relationship ever discovered in economic data http://t.co/oCoHX4jf8q pic.twitter.com/pch5Ry11zs
— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) February 14, 2014
Wondering how your country performed? The full results of Gallup's poll are below.
Rank
Country
Percent Feeling Love
1
Philippines
93%
2
Rwanda
92%
3
Puerto Rico
90%
4
Hungary
89%
5
Cyprus
88%
6
Trinidad and Tobago
88%
7
Paraguay
87%
8
Lebanon
86%
9
Costa Rica
85%
10
Cambodia
85%
11
Nigeria
84%
12
Guyana
83%
13
Spain
83%
14
Mexico
82%
15
Tanzania
82%
16
Ecuador
82%
17
Jamaica
82%
18
Venezuela
82%
19
Cuba
82%
20
Brazil
82%
21
Laos
81%
22
Argentina
81%
23
Belgium
81%
24
Canada
81%
25
Greece
81%
26
United States
81%
27
Denmark
80%
28
Portugal
80%
29
Netherlands
80%
30
Vietnam
79%
31
New Zealand
79%
32
Italy
79%
33
Colombia
79%
34
Madagascar
78%
35
Uruguay
78%
36
Turkey
78%
37
Dominican Republic
78%
38
United Arab Emirates
77%
39
Saudi Arabia
77%
40
Chile
76%
41
Malawi
76%
42
Ghana
76%
43
South Africa
76%
44
Australia
76%
45
Panama
75%
46
Zambia
74%
47
Kenya
74%
48
Namibia
74%
49
Nicaragua
74%
50
Germany
74%
51
Ireland
74%
52
Sweden
74%
53
United Kingdom
74%
54
Switzerland
74%
55
Montenegro
74%
56
Austria
73%
57
France
73%
58
Kuwait
73%
59
Finland
73%
60
El Salvador
73%
61
Pakistan
73%
62
Zimbabwe
72%
63
Honduras
72%
64
Peru
72%
65
Egypt
72%
66
Serbia
72%
67
Bosnia and Herzegovina
72%
68
Sierra Leone
71%
69
India
71%
70
Taiwan
71%
71
Bangladesh
70%
72
Belize
70%
73
Croatia
69%
74
Macedonia
69%
75
Mozambique
69%
76
Bolivia
69%
77
Liberia
68%
78
Iran
68%
79
China
68%
80
Slovenia
68%
81
Haiti
68%
82
Norway
67%
83
Sri Lanka
67%
84
Poland
67%
85
Guatemala
67%
86
Uganda
66%
87
Sudan
66%
88
Israel
66%
89
Kosovo
65%
90
Thailand
65%
91
Jordan
65%
92
Albania
64%
93
Guinea
62%
94
Botswana
62%
95
Angola
62%
96
Burkina Faso
62%
97
Malaysia
61%
98
Mali
61%
99
Niger
61%
100
Palestinian Territories
61%
101
Romania
61%
102
Senegal
61%
103
Indonesia
61%
104
Afghanistan
60%
105
Hong Kong
60%
106
Cameroon
59%
107
Japan
59%
108
Nepal
59%
109
Bulgaria
59%
110
Slovakia
58%
111
Singapore
58%
112
Czech Republic
58%
113
Mauritania
57%
114
Benin
56%
115
South Korea
56%
116
Myanmar
55%
117
Latvia
54%
118
Togo
54%
119
Estonia
53%
120
Lithuania
50%
121
Russia
50%
122
Chad
49%
123
Yemen
48%
124
Ukraine
48%
125
Ethiopia
48%
126
Azerbaijan
47%
127
Tajikistan
47%
128
Moldova
46%
129
Kazakhstan
45%
130
Morocco
43%
131
Belarus
43%
132
Georgia
43%
133
Kyrgyzstan
34%
134
Mongolia
32%
135
Uzbekistan
32%
136
Armenia
29%
