Pura Vida Costa Rica
The Happiest Country on Earth
By Utopia Magazine
Those of us who live there had figured this out already, hadn’t we? But isn’t fantastic to have official confirmation of it? And besides, to learn that the entire country feels the same way!
The revealing study conducted by the New Economics Foundation (NEF), entitled, “The Happy Planet Index: Why good lives don’t have to cost the Earth”, is the second of its kind and it took place at a global level representing 99% of the Earth’s population. The first one was done in 1961, but with very different results.
While the “most famous” part of this analysis is the perception of happiness of the inhabitants of specific nations, the overall study is a detailed analysis of the level of ecological and social efficiency of each country. The study compares the economic development and consumption levels of each nation in comparison to their life expectancy and perception of quality of life.
The surprise is that the findings revealed a result much different from what was anticipated. In fact, the study exposed that the nations that were deemed most “successful” in the 1961 study, received some of the lowest scores in this recent study, while countries with lower growth rates ranked higher in most aspects of citizen satisfaction.
In 1961, the United States, China and India were the 3 happiest countries on the planet.
Today, however, these same countries, following several decades of development models based on a continuous growth rate, are ranked a lot lower on the charts. China ranked in 20th; India in 35th and the Unites States is now in 114th place.
This is how the authors of the study summarized the receding position of those nations:
“ The race during the last decades to continually increase their income level has been achieved at the expense of the social and environmental capital causing negative consequences to the mental health of their citizens.”
Costa Ricans by contrast, report the highest perception of happiness amongst all nations polled and the best part is that the country attains this with a very small ecological footprint. That is, Costa Rican’s achieve satisfaction by consuming only the portion of Earth’s natural resources that rightfully correspond to them.
Once more, Costa Rica with its model of society so uniqueshows the world a viable alternative of development. This time the message is not only one of peace and respect for the environment, but also one of something even more complex and perhaps much more elusive: People’s happiness.
Again, the eyes of the world are focused on this little mound of earth, only this time they are more anxious to listen to and imitate its recipes. Completely unintentionally, Costa Rica awakened the curiosity of the planet and without countries to discover the wisdom hidden in its simpler life style.
Who wouldn’t be curious to discover for themselves the recipe for happiness?
Who wouldn’t want to know how this economy manages to be solid and alive, and still do so with a low level ecological footprint and a high degree of satisfaction amongst its citizen?
Or as the authors of the study put it, “What is the recipe to attain happy lives… without costing the planet?”
It appears that Costa Rica has found an answer.
As usual, those of you who are curious are very welcome to come and enjoy for yourself… By NY Times.com
You think it’s a coincidence? Costa Rica is one of the very few countries to have abolished its army, and it’s also arguably the happiest nation on earth. There are several ways to measuring happiness in countries, all inexact, but this pearl of Central America does stunningly well by whatever system used. For example, the World Database of Happiness compiled by a Dutch sociologist on the basis of answer to surveys by Gallup and others, lists Costa Rica in the top spot out of 148 nations. That’s because Costa Ricans, asked to rate their own happiness on a 10-point scale, average 8.5. Denmark is next at 8.3, the United States ranks 2oth at 7.4 and Togo and Tanzania bring up to the caboose at 2.6. Scholars also calculate happiness by determining “happy life years”. This figure results from merging average self –reported happiness, as above, with life expectancy. Using this system, Costa Rica again easily tops the list. A third approach is the “happy planet index”, devised by the New Economics Foundation, a liberal think tank. This combines happiness and longevity but adjusts for environmental impact-such as the carbon that countries spew. Here again, Costa Rica wins the day, for achieving contentment and longevity in an environmentally sustainable way. Maybe Costa Rican contentment has something to do with the chance to explore dazzling beaches on both sides of the country, when one isn’t admiring the sloths in the jungle (sloths truly are slothful, I discovered; they are the tortoises of the tree). Costa Rica has done an unusually good job preserving nature, and it’s surely easier to be happy while basking in sunshine and greenery that while shivering up north and suffering “nature deficit disorder”. What sets Costa Rica apart is its remarkable decision in 1949 to dissolve its armed forces and invest instead in education. Increased schooling created a more stable society, less prone to the conflicts that have raged elsewhere in Central America. Education also boosted the economy, enabling the country to become a major exporter of computer chips and improving English-language skills so as to attract American eco-tourists. But the evidence is strong that education us often a far better investment than artillery. In Costa Rica, rising education levels also fostered impressive gender equality so that it ranks higher that the United States in the World Economic Forum gender gap index. This allows Cost Rica to use its female population more productively that is true in most of the region. Likewise, education nurtured improvements in health care, with life expectancy now about the same as in the United States – a bit longer in some data sets, a bit shorter in others. Rising education levels also led the country to preserve its lush environment as an economic asset. Costa Rica is an ecological pioneer, introducing a carbon tax in 1997. The Environmental Performance Index, a collaboration of Yale and Columbia Universities, ranks Costa Rica at No. 5 in the world, but the best outside Europe. This emphasis on the environment hasn’t sabotaged Costa Rica’s economy but has bolstered it. Indeed, Costa Rica is one of the few countries that seeing migration from the United States.
The Happiest People