Looking for a country where people feel really good about themselves, their friends and family and community? A new global study done by Gallup-Healthways shows Panama is the best place in the world for well-being.
Panama is #1 in four of the five elements considered necessary for well-being, which include:
- Purpose: liking what you do each day and being motivated to achieve your goals
- Social: having supportive relationships and love in your life
- Financial: managing your economic life to reduce stress and increase security
- Community: liking where you live, feeling safe and having pride in your community
- Physical: having good health and enough energy to get things done daily
Panama tops the Purpose, Social, Community and Physical elements and Sweden is #1 in Financial.
The Gallup-Healthways Global Well-Being Index is a global barometer of individuals’ perceptions of their well-being and is the largest recent study of its kind, based on 133,000 interviews conducted last year in 135 countries.
Panama’s and Sweden’s top scores were remarkable when compared with global averages for each element:
- Purpose: Panama 66 percent Global Average 18 percent
- Social: Panama 68 percent Global Average 23 percent
- Financial: Sweden 72 percent Global Average 25 percent
- Community: Panama 58 percent Global Average 26 percent
- Physical: Panama 63 percent Global Average 24 percent
The top 10 countries with the highest scores in three or more elements are: Panama, Costa Rica, Denmark, Austria, Brazil, Uruguay, El Salvador, Sweden, Guatemala and Canada.
Regionally, the Americas score the highest in all elements except Financial, which belongs to Europe.
Latin Americans generally report higher levels of well-being, Gallup-Healthways says, than any other regional group, which is consistent with other Gallup World Poll research that shows residents of Latin America generally evaluating their lives more highly than those in other regional groups. This partly reflects a cultural tendency in the region to focus on the positives in life.
Europe is second to the Americas, followed, in descending order, by Asia, the former Soviet Union, Middle East and North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.