Happy Planet Index ranks Philippines as the 20th happiest country in the world
What are the factors which have made the Philippines as the 20th happiest country in the world?
Based on the Happy Planet Index 2016 ranking, the Philippines ranked 20th of the happiest countries in the world. This is five places higher than last year, 25th.
On the data shown by the HPI 2016, the Philippines had an overall rating of 35.
This year, the “happiest country in the world” is Costa Rica which had a score of 44.7.
In order to come up with this ranking, the HPI combines four elements to show how efficiently residents of different countries use environmental resources to lead long, happy lives among the people.
These factors include: life expectancy or the average number of years a person is expected to live in each country; well-being or how satisfied the residents of each country say they feel about life overall; ecological footprint which refers to the average impact that each resident of a country places on the environment; and the inequality of outcomes meaning inequalities between people within a country, in terms of how long they live and how happy they feel, based on the distribution in each country’s life expectancy and well-being data.
The ranking of the HPI used the data from the 2016 list used numbers from 2012 provided by the Gallup World Poll, the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations, and the Global Footprint Network.
In the Philippines, the data show, the average life expectancy is 67.9. This is better than other countries in Southeast Asia like Myanmar having 65.5 and Cambodia having 67.5. Despite this, Philippines is ranking below Thailand having 74.1, Malaysia having 74.4, and Vietnam which had 75.5.
Average well-being in the Philippines, on the other hand, was rated at 5. In the survey conducted by the Gallup World Poll, the numbers is a representing figure on the steps on the ladder, where 10 is the best possible life for the citizen and 0 indicates the worst.
As shown in the formula used by HPI, these numbers were pulled up by the Philippines’ positive ecological footprint of 1.1.
Over-all, the top 20 happiest countries are:
- Costa Rica, 44.7
- Mexico, 40.7
- Colombia, 40.7
- Vanuatu, 40.6
- Vietnam, 40.3
- Panama, 39.5
- Nicaragua, 38.7
- Bangladesh, 38.4
- Thailand, 37.3
- Ecuador, 37.0
- Jamaica, 36.9
- Norway, 36.8
- Albania, 36.8
- Uruguay, 36.1
- Spain, 36.0
- Indonesia, 35.7
- El Salvador, 35.6
- Netherlands,35.3
- Argentina, 35.2
- Philippines, 35.0