What makes you happy? What do you most prioritize in order to feel that you are living the life you most hope to live… a good education, clean water, more income, affordable housing?
Economists understand that there are more ways to measure a society’s well-being then just GDP (which can actually go up even when undesirable things occur like an oil spill).
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is a Paris based group that has developed a tool they think more accurately reflects the intangible ingredients of a happy life. The Better Life Index (BLI), launched in 2010, has over 4 million respondents in 180 countries. This index asks respondents to rank those things that they feel help lead to a life well lived based on a scale of one to ten.
Some things really stand out when analyzing the results of this project. For instance The United States values income over all other measures used by the OECD. Americans value their income more than civic engagement almost two to one, while Australia is nearly the opposite on those scores… 2-1 in favor of civic engagement over worries about income. 
The BLI has a multitude of ways to analyze their data. Go from country to country to see how each stacks up, or peruse by topic to find graphs showing what societies believe add the most to their happiness.
Want to add your two cents to the project? Click here to begin learning about what is important to other societies around the world and to the let the world know what you think makes for a life well lived.