Is Costa Rica Really the Happiest Nation on Earth?

Perhaps. But perhaps not. Nicholas Kristof‘s recent Times Op-Ed set out to explain why Costa Rica is “the happiest nation on earth.” This led my happiness coauthor Betsey Stevenson and me to explore further (which is why we are writing this post together). Kristof claims that:


That’s because Costa Ricans, asked to rate their own happiness on a 10-point scale, average 8.5. Denmark is next at 8.3, the United States ranks 20th at 7.4, and Togo and Tanzania bring up the caboose at 2.6.

The ultimate source of these data is the Gallup World Poll, which we’ve analyzed in our previous research. It’s worth remembering that there are several measures of well-being in the Gallup data. The numbers Kristof cites come from responses to the question: “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days? Use a 0 to 10 scale, where 0 is dissatisfied and 10 is satisfied.”

It’s probably worth being clear that what he’s measuring is life satisfaction, which may be very different from the point he’s making, which is about happiness. In fact, none of the major cross-national studies have ever measured the happiness of Costa Ricans. But they have measured some aspects of their subjective well-being.

More to the point, the well-being question that the Gallup folks tend to emphasize comes from the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale, which asks: “Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. Suppose we say that the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you, and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time, assuming that the higher the step the better you feel about your life, and the lower the step the worse you feel about it? Which step comes closest to the way you feel?”

On this measure, there’s nothing particularly notable about Costa Rica. She comes in equal 19th in the well-being tables — equal with Panama and Iceland, and just above Mexico.

As the chart below shows, typically these two measures are highly correlated. What is particularly striking is that Latin American countries (shown in red) tend to do a lot better on the question that Kristof emphasizes, rather than on the question the Gallup folks emphasize.


We can’t explain these differences, and we don’t even have a strong theory as to which is the better measure. Before we can declare Costa Rica the winner in the happiness stakes, we need further evidence.

One way to think about whether this is a robust finding is to look to other measures. Kristof tries this, reporting on two others:




Unfortunately these are not actually independent alternatives; they are simply the same life satisfaction number, but with extra adjustments made. Had they made these adjustments to the Cantril Ladder score instead, the conclusions would be far less favorable for Costa Rica than the numbers Kristof cites.

To know that a finding is robust, we would like to see similar results in another survey. So we dug a bit further to see what we could learn about Costa Rica. There are a few other major cross-national data sets measuring happiness, but unfortunately Costa Rica never features in the World Values Survey, the International Social Survey Programme, the Pew Global Attitudes Project, or our own database of historical happiness studies. At this point, it’s tempting to conclude that the most distinctive thing about happiness in Costa Rica is simply how few surveys have actually measured the happiness of Costa Ricans.

That said, there’s one useful source: The LatinBarometer measures life satisfaction in 18 Latin American countries. Typically, Costa Rica ranks in the top handful of Latin American countries. In 2006 — the latest year for which data are freely available — Costa Rica was the 4th most satisfied out of these 18 nations, behind Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Panama. In earlier years, it has been a bit higher — and it’s typically near the top — among Latin American nations. This is consistent with Gallup’s measurements using the Cantril Scale, which puts Costa Rica (along with Panama and Venezuela) atop the Latin American well-being tables.

While Costa Rica ranks near the top in the LatinBarometer, Latin American countries rarely rank in the top handful in the big international studies — except on the life-satisfaction question. Latin America is remarkably happy given its poverty, but it is rarely found to be as happy as the rich OECD countries (and particularly the Nordic nations) which are always near the top of the table, no matter what the specifics of the question asked.

Kristof may be right that there is something useful to learn from the relative success of Costa Rica. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that economic development is overwhelmingly the strongest explanator of which countries top the happiness tables.

(This post was written jointly with Betsey Stevenson.)


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  1. Eileen Wyatt says:

    Has anyone done a regression against dominant religions in the various countries?

    Latin America is reputedly dominant Catholic, and my fairly recent memory of the Catholic Church is that there is strong social pressure to declare oneself happy with one’s lot in life. If internalized — as religious beliefs are supposed to be — that would lead to high satisfaction self-reports on Kristof’s question, but not on Gallup’s question (as the doctrinally correct answer for that should be that a person isn’t living as pure and good a life as he or she ideally should be).

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  2. royka says:

    This post misses the point. let’s say costa rica isn’t #1, maybe its only in top 5 or ten. the point is, WHY? and, why is the USA so much lower. how are people investing their time for a better life, and what can we learn? let’s not argue decimal points at the cost of real change.

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  3. Mark says:

    19th among 148 nations (top 15%) is not notable???

    On this measure, there’s nothing particularly notable about Costa Rica. She comes in equal 19th in the well-being tables – equal with Panama and Iceland, and just above Mexico.

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  4. Jusitn says:

    Kristof’s conclusion seems to be that if one moves to Costa Rica, one will become more happy.

    It seems a robust regression is required to make this statement. To follow up on comment #1, I imagine more religious people are happier, wealthier people are happier, etc.

    What information is needed to isolate the country specific happiness effects, and does Costa Rica still make the top of the list if controlling for variables? In short, will I be more happy if I move to Costa Rica?

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  5. Vishal says:

    The Cantril Ladder score does not seem as good a gauge of personal happiness as the satisfaction survey. By asking people to estimate where their lives rank relative to all possible lives for them, it invites people to compare and rank their lives against their perceptions of the lives–and particularly the material well being–of others. It’s true that the question used in the Cantril survey does not explicitly mention money, but for most people, it is the most obvious measurement for defining “best possible life.” Yet a person may be completely content with his or her station in life (happy), and simultaneously assume that others–particularly those with more money and luxuries–live better lives. Kristof, by citing the satisfaction surveys, seems to be getting at a more subjective sense of happiness–one that permits those who are so inclined to measure their own happiness relative to how happy they believe others to be, but that does not compel them to do so.

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  6. Garvit Sah says:

    The question that needs answer is whether this happiness is a result of living in a particular country – that whether person moving to Costa Rica from another country become happier and vice versa a person moving out of Costa Rica become unhappier? It seems more plausible that the general feeling of happiness is more of a people trait being a result of upbringing and culture.

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  7. Shay says:

    I wasn’t happier in Costa Rica. Beautiful country, but until its young males discover a little something called “feminism,” count me back in the good old U.S. of A.
    Also, holy traffic, batman!

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  8. Stephen says:

    Maybe the only people that responded were retired Americans who moved to Costa Rica.

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