The GWI’s 2024 report, The Global Wellness Economy: Country Rankings, provides two different sets of country rankings. When we look at overall wellness economy size, the countries that come out on top, not surprisingly, tend to be countries with very large economies and populations: the US, China, Germany, Japan, and the UK. However, when we remove the size factor and measure wellness spending per capita, an entirely different set of countries comes out on top. Looking at per capita wellness spending also enables us to compare how much consumers devote to wellness relative to other major consumer spending categories, including healthcare, clothing, and hotels/restaurants. READ MORE to see which countries rank highest for wellness spending per person and how this category stacks up to other consumer expenditures.
In 2022, $51 billion was spent globally on workplace wellness programs. Yet, the global workforce is more unhappy, unhealthy and unwell. According to a recent Gallup report, employees’ stress has reached unprecedented levels and “the majority of the world’s employees continue to struggle at work and in life, with direct consequences for organizational productivity.” The value of workplace wellness programs is a topic of endless debate in the academic literature, but more researchers are concluding that many programs are being sold despite the lack of evidence that they work. One peer-reviewed study showed that, with the exception of doing charity/volunteer work, none of the wellness offerings—the apps, coaching, relaxation classes, courses in time management or financial health—have any positive effect, and that training in resilience and stress management actually showed a negative effect. Employers need to wake up and address the ways that they cause the stress in the first place. The bottom line: fair remuneration, livable hours, and good working conditions are the best workplace programs that exist.
GWI’s website (www.wellnessevidence.com) is the only resource dedicated to the medical evidence for wellness approaches.
A study presented at the 2024 European Society of Cardiology meeting examined data from 90,903 adults in the UK Biobank project, a database holding medical and lifestyle records of 500,000 people in the UK. Of these, 19,816 met the criteria for being sleep deprived. Over a follow-up period of 14 years, the researchers found that the people who had the most extra sleep during the weekends were 19% less likely to develop heart disease than those with the least amount of weekend sleep. The lowered risk of heart disease was even more pronounced for people who regularly experience inadequate sleep on weekdays. ACCESS THIS STUDYon sleep health.
Nearly 40,000 people died alone in their homes in Japan this year and nearly 4,000 were discovered more than a month after they died. Source: Japan’s National Police Agency, data for first half of 2024
Read more about the country's growing issue of vast numbers of its aging population living and dying alone.
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