Happy, happy, happy planet.
Forget GDP, GNP and all that economic blather. What's important is happiness, isn't it ? And some bright sparks in the New Economics Forum have been working on measuring just that.
They've recently published the Happy Planet Index 2.0 which compares the, well, happiness of different countries. They use three indicators to measure this:
- Life Expectancy
- Life satisfaction
- Ecological Footprint
The global winner is Costa Rica with a score of 76.1/100. Not bad for a country without an army, eh ? Ireland is well off the podium in 78th position with a score of 42.6/100. We do well on life-expectancy, very well on life-satisfaction (self-expressed in a Gallup poll) but terribly on the ecological footprint.
If its any consolation, we beat the pants of the Yanks who finish 114th mainly due to their dire footprint as well.