Index of human well-being and environmental impact
Map showing countries shaded by their score in the Happy Planet Index (2019).
The Happy Planet Index (HPI) is an index of human well-being and environmental impact that was introduced by the New Economics Foundation in 2006. Each country's HPI value is a function of its average subjective life satisfaction, life expectancy at birth, and ecological footprint per capita. The exact function is a little more complex, but conceptually it approximates multiplying life satisfaction and life expectancy and dividing that by the ecological footprint. The index is weighted to give progressively higher scores to nations with lower ecological footprints.
The index is designed to challenge well-established indices of countries’ development, such as the gross domestic product (GDP) and the Human Development Index (HDI), which are seen as not taking sustainability into account. In particular, GDP is seen as inappropriate, as the usual ultimate aim of most people is not to be rich, but to be happy and healthy.[1] Furthermore, it is believed that the notion of sustainable development requires a measure of the environmental costs of pursuing those goals.[2]
For the 2012 ranking, 151 countries were compared, and the best scoring country for the second time in a row was Costa Rica, followed by Vietnam, Colombia, Belize and El Salvador. The lowest ranking countries in 2012 were Botswana, Chad and Qatar.[6][7] In 2016, out of 140 countries, Costa Rica topped the index for the third time in a row.[8] It was followed by Mexico, Colombia, Vanuatu and Vietnam.[9] At the bottom were Chad, Luxembourg and Togo. The latest update was published in 2021 by the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. According to that update, the top 10 ranking countries (in 2019) were Costa Rica, Vanuatu, Colombia, Switzerland, Ecuador, Panama, Jamaica, Guatemala, Honduras and Uruguay.[10] The 2021 update also, for the first time, highlighted trends over time, noting for example improving Happy Planet Index scores in Western Europe and in Africa, but declining scores in South Asia.
Methodology
The HPI is based on general utilitarian principles– that most people want to live long and fulfilling lives, and the country which is doing the best is the one that allows its citizens to do so, whilst avoiding infringing on the opportunity of future people and people in other countries to do the same. In effect it operationalises the IUCN's (International Union for Conservation of Nature) call for a metric capable of measuring 'the production of human well-being (not necessarily material goods) per unit of extraction of or imposition upon nature'.[11] The IUCN is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and the sustainable use of natural resources. It measures what matters, a sustainable well-being for all.
Human well-being is conceptualized as happy life expectancy.[12] Extraction of or imposition upon nature is evaluated by using the ecological footprint per capita, which attempts to estimate the number of natural resources required to sustain a given country's lifestyle. A country with a large per capita ecological footprint uses more than its fair share of resources, both by drawing resources from other countries and also by causing permanent damage to the planet which will affect future generations.[13]
As such, the HPI is not a measure of which are the happiest countries in the world. Countries with relatively high levels of life satisfaction, as measured in surveys, are found from the very top (Colombia in 3rd place) to the very bottom (the US in 108th place) of the rank order. The HPI is best conceived as a measure of the environmental efficiency of supporting well-being in a given country. Such efficiency could emerge in a country with a medium environmental impact (e.g. Costa Rica) and very high well-being, but it could also emerge in a country with only mediocre well-being, but very minimal environmental impact (e.g. Vietnam).
Criticism
Much criticism of the index has been due to commentators incorrectly understanding it to be a measure of personal happiness, when it is in fact a measure of the "happiness" of the planet. In other words, it is a measure of the ecological efficiency at supporting well-being.[14][15] Further more the Happy Planet Index was criticized because the used data is not comprehensive enough. In the HPI Report of 2006 (by nef) they emphasized that they “were forced to estimate data on Footprint and life satisfaction for several countries”. Furthermore, they added that “there are obvious problems with the data from some countries, especially when it is collected and distributed by the country’s government.”[16]
Aside from that, criticism has focused on the following:
The World Values Survey covers only a minority of the world's nations and is only carried out every five years. As a result, much of the data for the index must come from other sources or is estimated using regressions.[bettersourceneeded]
The index has been criticized for weighting the carbon footprint too heavily, to the point that the US would have had to be universally happy and would have had to have a life expectancy of 439 years to equal Vanuatu's score in the 2006 index.[17]
Nevertheless, the HPI and its components have been considered in political circles. The ecological footprint, championed by the WWF, is widely used by both local and national governments, as well as supranational organizations such as the European Commission. The HPI itself was cited in 2007, in the British Conservative Party as a possible substitute for GDP.[18] A 2007 review of progress indicators produced by the European Parliament[19] lists the following pros and cons to using the HPI as a measure of national progress:
Pros
considers the actual ‘ends’ of economic activity in the form of life satisfaction and longevity
combines well-being and environmental aspects
simple and easily understandable scheme for calculating the index
comparability of results (‘EF’ and ‘life expectancy’ can be applied to different countries)
data available online, although some data gaps remain.
mixture of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ criteria; takes into account people's well-being and resource use of countries.
Cons
‘happiness’ or ‘life satisfaction’ are very subjective and personal: cultural influences and complex impact of policies on happiness.
confusion of name: index is not a measure of happiness but rather a measure of environmental efficiency of supporting well-being in a given country.
International rankings
2019 ranking
For the 2019 ranking, 152 countries were compared and eight out of the ten top countries were located in Central and South America, despite high levels of poverty. The ranking was led by Costa Rica with an HPI score of 62.1, with its lead considered to be due to its very high life expectancy of 77 years.[20] Citizens of Costa Rica were found to experience well-being higher than many richer nations and the country had a per capita footprint less than one third the size of the US.[21] The second happiest country was Vanuatu. The highest ranking OECD country was Costa Rica,[22] in 1st place, and the top country in Europe is Switzerland, in 4th place, just behind Colombia in 3rd.[23]
↑ Adams WM (2006). The future of sustainability: Re-thinking environment and development in the twenty-first century. Report of the IUCN Renowned Thinkers Meeting. Also, Paehlke R (2005). Sustainability as a bridging concept. Conservation Biology 19:36-8.
↑ Veenhoven R (1996). Happy life expectancy: a comprehensive measure of quality-of-life in nations. Social Indicators Research 39:1-58.
↑ Nic, Marcs (2006). The Unhappy Planet Index. An index of human well-being and environmental impact. UK: New Economics Foundation (online available for free as .pdf). p.45. ISBN1-904882-11-0.
↑ Goossens Y, et al. (2007). Alternative progress indicators to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a means towards sustainable development. IP/A/ENVI/ST/2007-10. The study provided for the European Parliament's Committee on the Environment, Public Health, and Food Safety. Archived 2012-10-30 at the Wayback Machine
↑ Roser, Max; Ortiz-Ospina, Esteban; Ritchie, Hannah (2013-05-23). "Life Expectancy". Our World in Data.
Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in the Central American region of North America. Costa Rica is bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, as well as maritime border with Ecuador to the south of Cocos Island. It has a population of around five million in a land area of 51,060 km2 (19,710 sq mi). An estimated 333,980 people live in the capital and largest city, San José, with around two million people in the surrounding metropolitan area.
Quality of life (QOL) is defined by the World Health Organization as "an individual's perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns".
Genuine progress indicator (GPI) is a metric that has been suggested to replace, or supplement, gross domestic product (GDP). The GPI is designed to take fuller account of the well-being of a nation, only a part of which pertains to the size of the nation's economy, by incorporating environmental and social factors which are not measured by GDP. For instance, some models of GPI decrease in value when the poverty rate increases. The GPI separates the concept of societal progress from economic growth.
The Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) is an economic indicator intended to replace the gross domestic product (GDP), which is the main macroeconomic indicator of System of National Accounts (SNA). Rather than simply adding together all expenditures like the GDP, consumer spending is balanced by such factors as income distribution and cost associated with pollution and other unsustainable costs. The calculation excludes defence expenditures and considers a wider range of harmful effects of economic growth. It is similar to the genuine progress indicator (GPI).
The Human Poverty Index (HPI) was an indication of the poverty of community in a country, developed by the United Nations to complement the Human Development Index (HDI) and was first reported as part of the Human Development Report in 1997. It is developed by United Nations Development Program which also publishes indexes like HDI It was considered to better reflect the extent of deprivation in deprived countries compared to the HDI. In 2010, it was supplanted by the UN's Multidimensional Poverty Index.
The Satisfaction with Life Index was created in 2007 by Adrian G. White, an analytic social psychologist at the University of Leicester, using data from a metastudy. It is an attempt to show life satisfaction in different nations.
The economics of happiness or happiness economics is the theoretical, qualitative and quantitative study of happiness and quality of life, including positive and negative affects, well-being, life satisfaction and related concepts – typically tying economics more closely than usual with other social sciences, like sociology and psychology, as well as physical health. It typically treats subjective happiness-related measures, as well as more objective quality of life indices, rather than wealth, income or profit, as something to be maximized.
The National Human Development Reports (NHDR) take the Global Human Development Report approach to the national level and are prepared and owned by national teams. More than 540 national and sub-national HDRs have been produced so far by 135 countries, in addition to 31 regional reports.
The Gender Development Index (GDI) is an index designed to measure gender equality.
The where-to-be-born index was an index last published by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in 2013, which aimed to measure which country would provide the best opportunities for a healthy, safe and prosperous life in the years after its publication.
The following are international rankings of Argentina:
The Legatum Prosperity Index is an annual ranking developed by the Legatum Institute, an independent educational charity founded and part-funded by the private investment firm Legatum. The ranking is based on a variety of factors including wealth, economic growth, education, health, personal well-being, and quality of life.
Released by UNESCO, the Gender Parity Index (GPI) is a socioeconomic index usually designed to measure the relative access to education of males and females. It is used by international organizations, particularly in measuring the progress of developing countries. For example, some UNESCO documents consider gender parity in literacy.
This is a list of international rankings of Colombia.
The OECD Better Life Index, created in May 2011 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, is an initiative pioneering the development of economic indicators which better capture multiple dimensions of economic and social progress.
Wikiprogress is a defunct online platform for sharing information on the measurement of social, economic and environmental progress. It is thought to facilitate sharing on ideas, initiatives and knowledge on "measuring the progress of societies". Like Wikipedia, it was open to all members and communities for contribution – anyone interested in "progress" could register.
Although for many decades, it was customary to focus on GDP and other measures of national income, there has been growing interest in developing broad measures of economic well-being. National and international approaches include the Beyond GDP programme developed by the European Union, the Better Lives Compendium of Indicators developed by the OECD, as well as many alternative metrics of wellbeing or happiness. One of the earliest attempts to develop such an index at national level was Bhutan's Gross National Happiness Index and there are a now a number of similar projects ongoing around the world, including a project to develop for the UK an assessment of national well-being, commissioned by the Prime Minister David Cameron and led by the Office for National Statistics.
The Social Progress Index (SPI) measures the extent to which countries provide for the social and environmental needs of their citizens. Fifty-four indicators in the areas of basic human needs, foundations of well-being, and opportunity to progress show the relative performance of nations. The index is published by the nonprofit Social Progress Imperative, and is based on the writings of Amartya Sen, Douglass North, and Joseph Stiglitz. The SPI measures the well-being of a society by observing social and environmental outcomes directly rather than the economic factors. The social and environmental factors include wellness, equality, inclusion, sustainability and personal freedom and safety.
The World Happiness Report is a report by the United Nations that measures national happiness. Data is primarily from the Gallup World Poll and based on respondent ratings of their own lives.
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