In 2016, researchers interviewed nearly 150,000 people in 142 countries about their day. Did you smile or laugh a lot? Did you experience enjoyment? Did you learn or do something interesting? Did you feel stress, anger, physical pain? They published the answers in a big report released this week called the Global Emotions Report.

Asking these kinds of questions could have allowed economists to more accurately predict huge social changes like Brexit, the boss of the company that published the report said. In the run up to the referendum, the UK looked like it was doing okay, by the measures economists normally use. The country's 'wealth' (or its GDP What's this? What's this? ') was growing at about 2 per cent and unemployment had dropped below 5 per cent.

What they weren't paying attention to was the emotional state of the country – things like, for example, a 15 per cent decline in the number of people rating their lives as ‘thriving’. And sometimes, it's how people feel about the economy that spurs their decisions more than just what they're told about how things are.

So how are people feeling around the world? Here’s what the report said: