Economists and sociologists spend a lot of time trying to ascertain how globalization "really" affects the poor around the world. Are their incomes rising or falling? Do they have more opportunities or fewer? How are they keeping up with better educated, higher earners? Is the gap closing?

The annual Pew Global Attitudes Project is an interesting diversion from that line of questioning. Instead of asking questions about people, it just asks people. The result is a useful subjective measure of how satisfied people around the world are with their lives and how they feel about their own respective futures.

The role that momentum -- positive and negative -- plays as a determinant in people's answers is striking. Common sense would tell you that comparatively rich citizens of the developed world might be a little glum about slowdown in the growth of new prospects, but overall, still pretty happy with their lot in life. And perhaps improving conditions in poor countries might sound a distant note of optimism, but the difficult reality of daily life would seem to overwhelm that prospect.

Not so. The Pew project's recent findings, "A Rising Tide Lifts Mood in the Developing World," reminds us that the direction and speed of the tide has the biggest role in overall satisfaction with life. The level of the tide itself is less important (at least, this is true on the large scale).

Newspapers have mined nuggets from Pew's many findings to tell the stories that emerge from the data. The Financial Times picked up on Pew's topline finding: a sharp decline in support for suicide bombing in Muslim countries. The Times points to truly remarkable changes in Lebanon, among other countries:

Of the 16 majority Muslim countries included in the survey, 15 have shown waning enthusiasm for terrorism in general and suicide terrorism in particular, it says. The most striking declines are in Lebanon, where in 2007 34 per cent of people say suicide bombings are justified compared with 74 per cent in 2002.

Grand Pew pollster Andrew Kohut weighs in on the dynamics behind this shift in opinion:

What is striking about these numbers is that support for terrorism has fallen by most in those countries that have experienced significant levels of domestic terrorism in the last few years – Pakistan and Lebanon being obvious examples.

The New York Times found a different thread, teaming up with Pew to investigate the positive attitudes that Africans have about their futures:

Despite a thicket of troubles, from deadly illnesses like AIDS and malaria to corrupt politicians and deep-seated poverty, a plurality of Africans say they are better off today than they were five years ago and are optimistic about their future and that of the next generation.

As anyone who studies (or lives in) Africa will attest, there are no simple answers to be had, and the picture changes from country to country. Overall 7 in 10 Africans are satisfied with their governments, and "a plurality of respondents said that their financial situation had improved in the last five years, with the exception of Ivory Coast, Tanzania and Uganda." But at the same time, respondents are deeply skeptical of their leadership: "More resource wealth has not necessarily led to broad prosperity. Of the respondents in Nigeria, 82 percent said average people were not benefiting from the country’s oil wealth."

Overall, I found the Pew project's findings to be a refreshing conversation with respondents in a variety of situations. After all, this whole development enterprise is most fundamentally about helping people lead more satisfying lives. It's well worth hearing what they have to say.