HPI Explorer
GDP asks how much a country produces. The Happy Planet Index asks something harder: how much long, satisfied life does a country deliver per unit of planet consumed? Three ingredients — life expectancy, self-reported life satisfaction, ecological footprint — for 157 countries over two decades, with South Asia as its own region. Costa Rica leads the world; Bangladesh and Nepal beat India; no country yet manages high wellbeing inside the planet's fair share.
What is the HPI — and why it matters
The Happy Planet Index, first published in 2006 and now in its 7th edition from the Hot or Cool Institute, is the longest-running attempt to measure what economies are ultimately for. It multiplies life expectancy (UN Population Division) by life satisfaction (Gallup World Poll's 0–10 ladder) to get "happy life years", then divides by the ecological footprint (global hectares per person, York University's Ecological Footprint Initiative). Rich countries buy long, satisfied lives with footprints the planet can't sustain; many poorer countries live within the planet's means but with short or unsatisfied lives. The interesting places — Costa Rica, and much of South Asia — are the ones that get the most life out of the least planet.
▸ How to read this explorer
- Start with the question. Tap any underlined word to change the view, the measure, the year or the region.
- The footprint is the denominator. For ecological footprint, lower is lighter — the bars shade accordingly. The planet's per-person "fair share" (biocapacity) has shrunk from 1.71 to 1.48 gha over these two decades.
- Four views: Rank the world in any year, track a country across two decades against the world median, compare two countries ingredient by ingredient, or list the full table.
- Gaps are honest. A country with no Gallup survey in a year gets no HPI score for that year — 134 of 157 countries are ranked in 2025. Blank means unmeasured, not zero.
- Every number is from the published data file — this page sorts and displays; it does not recompute the index.
Making sense of the numbers
What the index measures. HPI ≈ (life expectancy × life satisfaction) ÷ ecological footprint, scaled 0–100 (the published formula adjusts satisfaction for survey variance and footprint toward global biocapacity; this page shows only published scores). Components: life expectancy at birth (UN Population Division), life satisfaction (Gallup World Poll ladder, 0–10, as shared in the World Happiness Report), and ecological footprint (global hectares per person, York University Ecological Footprint Initiative). Where Gallup skips a country-year, the authors interpolate a linear trend between surveyed years; where no satisfaction data exists at all, no HPI is computed — that's why ranks say "of 134" in 2025, not "of 157".
Reading it responsibly. Life satisfaction is self-reported and shaped by expectations, culture and survey language — treat small cross-country gaps as noise. The footprint is a consumption measure (imports count against the consumer, not the producer). And the HPI's hardest caveat cuts close to home: a small footprint can reflect green efficiency or plain deprivation, and the index cannot tell them apart. South Asia's strong showing — Bangladesh #27, Nepal #37, Pakistan #45 — rides on footprints under 1 gha alongside some of the world's lowest satisfaction scores (India's 4.37 in 2025 is far below its neighbours' life-expectancy-adjusted peers). Read the ingredients, not just the headline: the compare view exists for exactly that.
The India puzzle worth teaching. India ranked #11 in the world in 2006; in 2025 it ranks #65. Life expectancy rose more than seven years and the footprint stayed near 1.1 gha — what collapsed is reported life satisfaction: 5.35 in 2006, bottoming at 3.25 in 2019, and 4.37 in 2025 — among the largest sustained declines anywhere in the data. Whether that reflects economics, inequality, survey measurement, or something deeper is an open scholarly debate — the trend view lets you watch it happen year by year.
What this explorer adds. The official site shows one country's scores in a map popup. This page works the same published file harder: rank any of the four measures in any of 20 years with region filters, track any country's two-decade trajectory against the world median (computed here, labelled as such) and the shrinking fair-share line, compare two countries ingredient by ingredient, and sort or search the full table. Derived rank positions come from sorting published scores; nothing else is computed.
Data: Abdallah, S. & Barberà Mas, E. (2026), The Happy Planet Index 2026 Data File, Hot or Cool Institute — download the public XLSX or the 2026 report from happyplanetindex.org. Cited here as the file requests. This is an independent, source-linked interface for learning and discussion — ImpactMojo is not affiliated with the Hot or Cool Institute.