Thursday, September 10, 2009

Fun with charts - Well-being and stock market


The first graph is Gallup's Healthways Well-being index (this link explains how the index is calculated, page 2). It measures people's well-being in particular in how they evaluate their life, how they feel emotionally, how satisfied they are with their work environment, what their physical health is, and what is their level of healthy behavior and basic access.
The second chart is the stock market (Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P500) for the same time period.

Surprisingly similar, aren't they? What does that mean?
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2 comments:

  1. Philip Irving MitchellSeptember 11, 2009 at 7:36 AM

    It suggests that we as a culture define our self-conception and satisfaction through consumption and income among other things. It also suggests that our places of work are often essential to our lives. After all, we spend the majority of our days there.

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  2. Jekabs BikisSeptember 11, 2009 at 9:26 AM

    I was thinking along the same lines. It is still striking to me to look at this and notice how much in sync the Dow chart is with people's self-reported well-being... probably too much in sync.

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