They say that money isn’t everything, and the New Economics Foundation (NEF) is out to prove it. In their Happy Planet Index Report 2.0, released on July 4, Latin American and Caribbean nations grabbed nine of the top 10 slots for happiest nations in the world. Costa Rica topped the list, followed by the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Guatemala, and Vietnam. The United States came in 114th. African nations with extreme poverty and war scored lowest, while developed nations fell towards the middle of the index, due mostly to greater ecological footprints and decreasing life satisfaction.
Nic Marks, Founder of the Centre for Well-Being at the NEF stated that, “As the world faces the triple crunch of deep financial crisis, accelerating climate change and the looming peak in oil production, we desperately need a new compass to guide us.” Why is Latin America particularly happy? “Latin Americans,” according to the data, “report being much less concerned with material issues than, for example, they are with their friends and family.” Further, ecological sustainability initiatives such as Costa Rica’s near elimination of fossil fuel energy generation and Colombia’s “Green Constitution” are given as examples of more intense progress in sustainability.
Unlike most “happiest places” lists that factor only cost-of-living vs. income ratios, the Happy Planet Index “combines environmental impact with human well-being to measure the environmental efficiency with which, country by country, people live long and happy lives.” Covering 143 nations and a reported 99 percent of the earth’s inhabitants, the index is a marvelous new approach to the age-old dilemma of the question, “What, exactly, constitutes happiness?” Using an ecological scope that envisions humans as living elements of their environs, the index divides resource consumption into “life satisfaction and life expectancy” in an equation that ultimately determines a nation’s rate of happiness. According to the Happy Planet Index PDF data sheet, “Research suggests that in most reasonably developed countries, material circumstances such as wealth and possessions play only a small role in determining levels of happiness.”
It’s all in the math, and the road to happiness, according to the report, is to slow down and smell the roses, become less addicted to materialism, place more value on family and friends, and try to live a more sustainable lifestyle with a lighter ecological footprint.
Graphic courtesy of MadArtists and Dreamstime photo.
