Viva Costa Rica

Costa Rica is an "outlier" in terms of indicators of well-being.

The list is a little out of date, though, because poor suffering Honduras was just a few notches down the list. My daughter was in Costa Rica a few years ago and her descriptions of that trip seemed to confirm both the greenness and the happiness. Costa Rica is officially pacifist, and a huge portion of its territory is held in nature preserves that bring tourists from around the world, and income to its rural citizens. The Quaker presence (exiles from WWI-era USA) at Monteverde is largely responsible for the country's thriving export dairy industry and the skill with which it has tapped into the international ecology movement. There are many people who are bilingual or trilingual, and the level of high-school graduation is high. New Internationalist Magazine profiled the country in 1996 (http://www.newint.org/issue281/profile.htm), and found it had made great progress on all fronts since 1983, when they first profiled it, with the highest literacy rates in the hemisphere and great protections for women and children. The one jarring note my daughter reported was the high rate of petty crime. Her backpack, including most of her journal entries was stolen just before she left the country by snatch-and-grab artists.

By the way, New Internationalist Country Profiles (http://www.newint.org/columns/country/list/) are a great way to understand the differences among countries on a number of measures. I find them more insightful than the CIA's profiles in most cases I've looked into.