Vanuatu: Third World, but a Whole Lot Happier than Us
In 2006, the NEF (New Economics Foundation) released the results of a comprehensive study they’d done on happiness in various countries in the form of the Happy Planet Index. The goal was to find a way to measure the success of a society other than things like GDP or HDI. Its a little simplistic to call the index a measure of happiness since its really intended to be a measure of a society’s capability to sustain and produce a happy populace. Which is more different than you might think. For those that are interested the Wikipedia page on the HPI discusses it pretty thoroughly.
Anyway, Vanuatu came out on top all things considered. In fact the top ten are nearly all third-world countries. But this isn’t too surprising to those who have spent time in a third-world country, since it doesn’t take long to realize that financial success ≠ societal happiness. I bring this up now because Mental_Floss posted a great article the other day about one author’s travels to Vanuatu in an attempt to find out how they made it to the top of the list. His observations are pretty interesting I think, and they remind me a lot of Ghana. Here’s a link to the article:
Vanuatu: The Happiest Place on Earth? | Mental_Floss
I’m not going to launch into any kind of analysis of why these people are happier, but feel free to leave your thoughts about the issue in the comments. Also, if you’d like to see the rank that the US ended up with on the “Happiness Index” out of 178 countries examined, just click “continue reading”… Continue reading
