The first and only global study of worry about, and harm from, risks to people's safety.
Nationally representative, and covering places with little or no official data on safety and risk. The data are free for governments, regulators, researchers and civil society to use. The Poll will be repeated in 2027 and 2029.
A resilient life.
One score from 0 to 100, built from four levels of resilience.
Can I protect myself?
Perceived agency in a disaster, education and the sense that one can cope.
Is my home ready?
Financial resilience, a household disaster plan and access to communications.
Will my neighbours help?
Perceptions of local support and of neighbours caring about one another.
Will institutions hold?
Trust in national institutions and whether government is felt to care.
Measured in 2021, 2023 and 2025, among the same respondents who answer Gallup's wellbeing questions. That lets the link between a good life and a resilient one be examined directly.
Global resilience is stable at 57. Underneath, individual resilience keeps falling as societal resilience climbs.
Wealth buys individual resilience. It does not buy societal resilience.
High-income countries lead on individual resilience by 15 points over upper-middle-income countries, and score nearly twice as high as lower-middle- and low-income countries.
On societal resilience they come last of all income groups, at 57. The United States ranks second of 139 countries on the individual and household dimensions, and 130th on societal.
Several high-income countries have lost ground on societal resilience since 2021.
All six saw falls in confidence in national government and in feeling cared for by it. The United States is the widest split of any country: second on individual and household resilience, 130th on societal.
Resilience is rising faster in Africa than anywhere else in the world.
These regions still have among the lowest scores globally, so the gains close a gap rather than open a lead. Rising internet access is one factor: up 17 points in Northern Africa since 2019, and 12 points each in Central/Western and Southern Africa.
The global fall in individual resilience is driven by a handful of countries with large populations.
More countries gained agency than lost it. But the falls include India, Pakistan and Indonesia, which weigh heavily on the global average. Individual resilience fell from 46 in 2021 to 42 in 2025.
In Eastern Europe the falls came with a collapse in agency, down 42 points in Slovakia and 40 in Bulgaria. Morocco’s fall followed the 2023 earthquake.
as the circle
widens
Each ring is one level of the Resilience Index, and its thickness is the gap between adults who are thriving and adults who are suffering. That gap runs to 26 points at the individual level and closes to nothing at the societal one.
A resilient life and a good life.
A better-rated life is a more resilient one, up to a point.
People classified as thriving score 63 on the Resilience Index, against 56 among those struggling and 47 among those suffering. The gap is at least 10 points in every income group.
At the individual level, adults who are thriving score twice as high as those suffering: 52 against 26. The link weakens at the community level and disappears at the societal level.
The gains flatten above a life rating of 7 out of 10. Moving from a good life to an exceptional one adds little further resilience.
There is no trickle-down effect for resilience. National wealth does not protect people with low wellbeing.
Among adults who rate their present life 0, 1 or 2, resilience sits between 43 and 50 in every income group. At the bottom of the ladder, living in a wealthy country makes little difference.
The gap opens as lives improve. By a rating of 9, high-income countries score 20 points above low-income countries.
Above 7 the gains flatten. In three of four income groups, people rating their life 10 are slightly less resilient than those rating it 9.
Perceptions of care.
Most people feel little or no care from their governments or their neighbours.
Every time the Poll has asked, people have been more likely to say their government does not care about them at all than that it cares a lot. In 97 countries that gap is at least 10 points; the reverse is true in 20.
Perceived care is U-shaped by national income. The least and most affluent countries share a symptom, not a cause.
Almost half of adults in low-income (44%) and high-income (45%) countries feel no care at all from government, against roughly one in four in lower-middle- (25%) and upper-middle-income (24%) countries.
Government care and community care are not substitutes. Weak institutions are not offset by strong informal networks: at the national level the two deficits tend to coincide (r = 0.57).
Translate the evidence into targeted action, not the global headline.
- 1Rebuild agency where declines concentrate. Prioritise India, Pakistan and Indonesia, while learning from the countries where agency improved.
- 2Treat societal resilience as a rich-country risk. Rebuild trust, care and institutional confidence where wealth is not translating into cohesion.
- 3Back Africa’s household momentum. Extend connectivity, financial resilience and household planning as the regional gap closes.
- 4Measure care and wellbeing as infrastructure. Track agency, perceived care and wellbeing alongside the composite score.
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