Click a component
Key: Happy Planet Index
| All three components good | |
| Two components good, one middling | |
| One component good, two middling | |
| Three components middling | |
| Any with one component poor | |
| Two components poor, or "blood red" footprint |
Key: Experienced well-being
| More than 6.2 | |
| Between 4.8 and 6.2 | |
| Less than 4.8 |
Key: Life expectancy
| More than 75 | |
| Between 60 and 75 | |
| Less than 60 |
Key: Ecological Footprint
| Less than 1.78 (the world's biocapacity) | |
| Between 1.78 and 3.56 | |
| Between 3.56 and 7.12 | |
| More than 7.12 |
Costa Rica achieves a Happy Planet Index Score of 64.0 and ranks #1 of all the countries analysed.
Costa Rica's HPI score reflects a high life expectancy, high levels of experienced well-being, and a moderate ecological footprint.
Other statistics
Costa Rica's experienced well-being score is 7.3 out of a possible 10.
This is below Denmark, the country with the highest level of experienced well-being, but higher than that of the USA, which has an average score of 7.16.
The data for experienced well-being draws on responses to the ladder of life question in the Gallup World Poll, which was asked to samples of around 1000 individuals aged 15 or over in each of the countries included in the Happy Planet Index.
Costa Rica's life expectancy is 79.3 and ranks #28 among the 151 countries analysed.
This is below Japan, the country with highest life expectancy (83.4), but higher than the USA, which has a life expectancy of 78.5.
The life expectancy figure for each country was taken from the 2011 UNDP Human Development Report and reflects the number of years an infant born in that country could expect to live if prevailing patterns of age-specific mortality rates at the time of birth in the country stay the same throughout the infant’s life.
Costa Rica's Ecological Footprint is 2.52 global hectares per capita.
If everyone had the same Ecological Footprint as the average citizen of Costa Rica:
- the world's Ecological Footprint would be 5% lower
- but we would still need to reduce our Ecological Footprints by around 40% in order to stay within sustainable environmental limits
Ecological Footprint is a metric of human demand on nature, used widely by NGOs, the UN and several national governments. It measures the amount of land required to sustain a country’s consumption patterns.
For a majority of the countries (142 of the 151), Ecological Footprint data were obtained from the 2011 Edition of Global Footprint Network National Footprints Accounts. For the nine other countries included (Belize, Comoros, Djibouti, Guyana, Hong Kong, Iceland, Luxembourg, Malta, and Palestine), Ecological Footprint figures were estimated using predictive econometric models.