How well is this country doing? We're in a double dip recession. We know that because GDP fell by 0.2% in the first three months of 2012. So if it had risen by 0.1% would we have been fine? Minute changes in GDP make headlines and can make or break political careers. But are we right to focus on GDP for our guide to how well the country is doing? GDP is not the only measure. scale
The New Economics Foundation's 'Happy Planet Index' [http://www.happyplanetindex.org/] is one alternative. And the countries that score well on it are not necessarily the rich, western ones. It is based on three factors: life expectancy, happiness and ecological footprint. In effect it measures the number of happy life years per unit of earth resource use.
I was therefore fascinated to attend an event last week on the Happy Planet Index and how Costa Rica managed to top it for the second time. I had read that the top three countries were Costa Rica, Vietnam and Colombia, but I had half wondered whether the low carbon footprint was because of a poorer standard of living and a level of happiness based on the fact that people were just used to what they had. The story of Costa Rica showed that it is not so simple.
Costa Rica seems to have prospered partly through design and partly through happy historical accident. It was poor in colonial times but did not have great wealth built on poorly paid or slave labour. It did not have a war of independence and it instituted universal education in the 19th century. The Social Security Administration was created in 1941 providing universal health care to wage earners. The army was abolished in 1949 (so those funds could be used for health). Labour rights (to paid holidays, the right to strike etc.) are enshrined in the constitution. At various points, very different sources of power and authority (the Catholic Church and the Communist Party, for instance) had to form alliances to work together. The Ambassador described a country with a culture of strong family and social networks. There was also a culture of equality – where the boss's and workers' children would sit together in the same classroom. It was a country, she said, where people were not afraid to argue with policemen. It caused a pause for thought about the conditions in this country.
Interestingly, the timing of the changes was important. It happened before the cold war, so Costa Rica did not suffer the same interference from the United States as some other countries attempting social change.
Costa Rica now has a medical system and life expectancy higher than the United States, greater wellbeing and a third of their carbon footprint. There is a particular focus, in Costa Rica, on promoting the environment and sustainability (e.g. reforestation and use of hydro-electricity) and eco-tourism is a key industry.
Some of Costa Rica's social democratic consensus has been challenged in recent decades by interventions from the IMF and World bank, reducing the power of unions and privatising the banks.
Of course the HPI is not perfect (but then GDP has taken 68 years to be developed to the point it is at today) and should be looked at alongside other measures and a more qualitative understanding of what life is like in the country. It is not a quality of life score, and if it were taken as such some of the results would look quite anomalous. Equality, personal safety and human rights are things which many people would value alongside wellbeing, as well as for the instrumental value in helping achieve it . NEF have experimented taking inequality into account (which leaves the first two countries where they are, but moves Colombia from 3rd to 7th place). But HPI is certainly worth using as a measure of 'progress'.
So, how does the UK fare? We have life expectancy of 80.2 years compared to Costa Rica's 79.3, wellbeing of 7.0 to their 7.3, and a footprint of 4.71 to their 2.52. In terms of GDP per capita it is 22nd in the world but 41st on the Happy Planet Index, although it does compare well with other developed countries on the latter. Our overall score is 47.9 (out of 100, Costa Rica's is 64.0). In 2006 when the HPI was launched, the UK scored 40.3 and was 108th in the world. So is the UK getting better? I'd want a richer analysis before finally deciding that, but this does at least draw attention to factors other than GDP. One thing the index certainly highlights is that we, like other developed countries, need to do more to reduce our carbon footprint: at least if we count towards 'how we are doing', the the long term wellbeing of everyone on the planet.
