by MZM
Introduction
We are examining the following question: What makes a country ‘happy’? We define happiness in terms of our well-being and the well-being of the planet, as both factors are essential to create long lasting happiness. To answer our question we look at the Happy Planet Index dataset, which collects data about countries around the world and compares them by calculating their happy planet index (hpi), which is a combined measure of life expectancy, reported happiness and ecological footprint of a country. We also aim to consider the impact of the covid pandemic on countries’ hpi scores.
We have decided to examine our data under three categories which we believe affect hpi scores of countries, these categories being - Economic, Wellbeing, and Ecological.
Economic Analysis
Countries with highest hpi have neither very high nor very low gdp per capita. Moreover when gdp per capita is plotted against happy life years (a measure which combines life expectancy and well-being to assess life quality) we see that the relationship is logarithmic, therefore if our aim is to try to increase global happiness we should invest money in the poorest nations as this would bring about the biggest change. Also mention the dangerous of splitting up data and fitting separate linear models over these groupings - a way to introduce error in analysis that should be addressed but we weren’t taught how to in the course.
Ecological Analysis
From 2016 to 2019 most countries have an increasing or steady ecological footprint but from 2019 to 2020 we see a decline from virtually every nation observed. This is not only a trend followed by similar countries as the gdp of countries in these regions vary significantly with africa being a lot lower than the rest. There are many possible reasons for this change but most obvious would be covid. The large scale closures and lockdowns would have led to less resources being required thus lowering countries ecological footprint. Other reasons could be governments being more proactive about climate change but this would not explain how wide spread this decrease is.
We can also observe that in general the higher a nations gdp the higher the eco footprint but looking at east asia and europe tells a different story where there seems to be no link or the opposite of what is expected. This is to be expected from a data set like this since countries and regions vary wildly due to culture, politics, beliefs and much more.
Well-being analysis
Overall, the graphs, shown in eight different regions, indicate that wellbeing measure in all regions are quite similar within each other throughout the years. Therefore, unlike ecological footprint, surprisingly, at least for me, we cannot say that COVID-19 has had a dramatic impact on people’s well-being around the world. Looking deeper into the graphs, Western Europe and North America & Oceania show the highest measures of well-being. Whereas, Africa and South Asia exhibit lower well-being measures compared to the rest. Furthermore, the two characteristics that stand out from the graph are from North America & Oceania and South Asia. Countries in north America & Oceania display very little variation in there data resulting in a much shorter range compared to other regions. South Asia on the other hand, have quite a lot of differences between their well-being measures that produces this variety of violin figures. Specifically, in 2019 there is a clear drop in well-being. This comes from the low data entry of Afghanistan. The violin plot in 2020 goes back to it’s average measure, however, this might be because Afghanistan does not have any data that year. Secondly, when comparing life expectancy and well being, it can be stated that Africa has both the lowest life expectancy and well-being values. On the other hand, Western Europe show very high data on both variables. The third graph shows ecological footprint vs well being measures. Even though a lot of them show fluctuation all regions generally show positive correlation between the two variables. As ecological footprint goes up, well-being increases.
Conclusion
In conclusion we can see that there are many different factors that can affect the happiness, wealth and eco-friendliness of a nation and each of these are also affected by outside forces such as a pandemic or more awareness of problems. It is also clear that countries need many positive characteristics to rank highly on the HPI and contribute to a happier world. When comparing many regions and even countries it is always important to keep in mind trends and other anomalies that are created due to possibly political or cultural diversity between these regions and other factors. What we have managed to show is that there are clear trends in the data but also anomalies but ultimately we have shown what is required to create a happy planet and trends that are associated with it.
Our presentation can be found here.
Happy Planet Index(URL) - Abdallah, S., Abrar, R. & Marks, N. (2021), The Happy Planet Index 2021, data file, Wellbeing Economy Alliance, viewed 25 October 2021, <www.happyplanetindex.org>
Data Source - https://happyplanetindex.org HPI Methodology Paper - https://happyplanetindex.org/wp-content/themes/hpi/public/downloads/happy-planet-index-methodology-paper.pdf