Would you move to Vanuatu?
A new global measure of progress, the Happy Planet Index, has been constructed by the New Economics Foundation (Nef) and Friends of the Earth using three factors: life expectancy, human wellbeing and damage done via a country’s “environmental footprint”. It is published today and you can find more details here.
Vanuatu comes top because its people are satisfied with their lot, live to nearly 70 and do little damage to the planet. Zimbabwe takes bottom place in the table. The United Kingdom trails in 108th. The US is 150th and Russia is 172nd, near the bottom of the 178 nations for which statistics are available.
Although the new index serves to demonstrate the price that people in developed countries are paying for their affluence, I hardly think that the index is an index of happiness for the people of different nations. I’m certainly not planning to move any time soon to Vanuatu or to Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras or Colombia, all of which feature in the top ten.