Costa Rica is the Happiest Country on Earth

Costa Rica ranks 1^st on the world happiness index according to a study by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) published on July 4^th.  The study measures a country’s ecological efficiency that, the NEF contends, will lead to longer and happier lives for its citizens.  This latest index is based on information collected from 143 countries around the world that together comprise 99% of the world’s population.  According to the report, this means that Costa Rica has the highest level of satisfaction in the world, has the second highest life expectancy in the Americas after Canada and is close to reaching a balance between its consumption and its natural resource capacity.  

Nic Mars, one of the study’s authors who was quoted in an article by the daily La Nacion, claims that Costa Ricans rated their country 8.5 on a scale from 1-10 and rated their life satisfaction as 9.2, the 2^nd highest in the study after Iceland.  Overall, Latin America dominates the top slots on the list with 9 out of the top 20 countries from this region, and three in Central America: Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.  

The 2^nd and 3^rd placeholders are nearby in the Caribbean: the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.  In an interview for the BBC world news, Asma Abdallah, lead author of the study, affirmed that the index measures ecological efficiency as a way to predict longer and happier lives, so those in 1^st place achieve their happiness more efficiently.  According to Abdallah, one example of this is that in most Latin American countries, energy is produced in a much cleaner fashion than say in Europe.  “In the United Kingdom, only 4.5% of electricity is generated from sustainable sources, while in Costa Rica, 99% is,” she pointed out.  Since ecology is key in the study, even though other countries have reached high levels of well-being, they have done so through an inefficient use of natural resources.  The study shows that although satisfaction and life expectancy combined have increased 15% over a 45-year period worldwide, the ecological footprint has grown by 72%.  The three largest countries in the world, China, India and the United States, have seen their positions on the index fall because of their unsustainable development models.  

The latter country placed 114^th.  Costa Ricans not only live a little bit longer than their northern counterparts, but also report higher levels of satisfaction with their lives.  Their ecological footprint is one-third as big, according to the NEF study.