Happiest Country on the Planet
The rooster often crows before the break of dawn, a dark hour when many farmers, fishermen and families in Costa Rican rise to seize the day. There's a rare coolness at this time of day, as multiple generations share a labor-of-love breakfast of gallo pinto, eggs, sweet plantains, bread or corn tortillas, fresh fruit and coffee.
In fact, any mealtime is likely family time, including a home-cooked lunch that many Costa Rican children and breadwinners return home to enjoy every day. Coffee signifies community, work offers camaraderie, and a town is just an extended family. Active living is how most waking moments are spent, whether at work, commuting or tending to household chores.
Natural light and nature overpower fluorescent bulbs and concrete walls. Nearly everyone in the country can read, health care is denied to no one, and there is always a celebration of a saint, a town, a food or a victorious event taking place somewhere.
However overgeneralized such timelessly wholesome depictions of lifestyle and culture may seem, Costa Rica stands up to modern scrutiny on multiple “good life” counts.
While small in size, it has a happiness stature second to none when certain measurable attributes are compared with other more populous, developed and wealthy countries.
For the third time in less than a decade, Costa Rica holds the prestigious title of World's Happiest Country, scoring higher than 139 others on the 2016
Happy Planet Index (HPI). As a self-proclaimed measurement of “what matters,” this global index of sustainable well-being was introduced in 2006 by the Londonbased New Economic Foundation, whose initiatives promote international reforms to social, economic and environmental policy.
The HPI score has four main components: experienced well-being, life expectancy, inequality of outcomes and ecological footprint.
Data from United Nations, Gallup World Poll and Global Footprint Network sources are factored into the HPI score, which has four main components: experienced wellbeing, life expectancy, inequality of outcomes and ecological footprint. Annual HPI reports provide a snapshot of how well nations are doing as habitats for enjoying long, happy and sustainable lives.
In simple terms, this is the equation used to calculate a country's overall score (see illustration below).
Costa Rica's winning score in 2016 (the most recent HPI year) was 44.7. This number on its own tells us nothing useful in percentage or “highest possible” terms. It suffices to know that all the other HPI countries had a lower overall score in 2016, even if some rated higher than Costa Rica in specific categories.
For example, current World Health Report data puts Costa Rica in 30th place for its average life expectancy of 79.1 years. Yet this takes nothing away from the Nicoya Peninsula's boasting rights as one of only five so-called blue zones in the world, where a disproportionately large number of centenarians thrive in health and happiness. (Learn more in the Howler article “Breaking 100,” about contributing factors such as diet, sense of purpose and community, strong familial relationships, sun exposure and activity level.)