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According to the results of the 2012 Happy Planet Index, South Africa is not quite as happy a place as many believe it to be, coming in 142nd out of 151 countries.

The index was released last week and looks at three factors –  life expectancy, experienced well-being and Ecological Footprint – to determine an average measure, which is worked out as follows:

Each of these components is based on a separate measure:

Experienced well-being. 
If you want to know how well someone’s life is going, your best bet is to ask them directly. In this year’s HPI, experienced well-being is assessed using a question called the ‘Ladder of Life’ from the Gallup World Poll. This asks respondents to imagine a ladder, where 0 represents the worst possible life and 10 the best possible life, and report the step of the ladder they feel they currently stand on.

Life expectancy. 
Alongside experienced well-being, the HPI includes a universally important measure of health – life expectancy. We used life expectancy data from the 2011 UNDP Human Development Report

Ecological Footprint. 
The HPI uses the Ecological Footprint promoted by the environmental charity WWF as a measure of resource consumption. It is a per capita measure of the amount of land required to sustain a country’s consumption patterns, measured in terms of global hectares (g ha) which represent a hectare of land with average productive biocapacity.

The index is considered an important measure of progress which accounts for factors which are not included in GDP. In their own words, “it measures what matters: the extent to which countries deliver long, happy, sustainable lives for the people that live in them.”

Costa Rica, Vietnam and Columbia occupy the top three spots, in that order. All of them boasting life expectancy of over 70, a well-being score of above five, and an ecological footprint lower than 2,5. This is in stark contrast to South Africa’s scores which are 52,8, 4,7 and 2,6 respectively. Other countries outscoring SA included Sierra Leone, Burundi, Angola, Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Egypt and Iran to name but a few. View the full list below.

[Source: Happy Planet Index]