Vanuatu - The Happiest Place on Earth
A study of 178-countries around the world has decided the
Happiest Place on Earth is
Vanuatu in the South Pacific.
The British think-tank New Economics Foundation based its finding on studies measuring people’s well-being and their impact on the environment, and took into account life satisfaction, life expectancy, and the amount of land required to sustain the population and absorb its energy consumption. The Foundation said its work had addressed the relative success or failure of countries in giving their citizens a good life while respecting the environmental resource limited on which all our lives depend.
Island nations generally performed particularly well in the rankings, but
Vanuatu with a population of around 200,000 topped them all. General Manager of the Vanuatu Tourism Office, Linda Kalpoi said she wasn’t surprised that
Vanuatu would be in the “top ten” of the world’s Happiest Places, but “delightfully surprised” it had topped the list. “People don’t do a lot of worrying here,” Mrs Kalpoi said. “And because we’re generally happy with our lot, we’re not a consumer-driven society. “Life in
Vanuatu is more about community values, our families and goodwill within our communities and to visitors to our country.”
July 2006
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