To mark the first-ever Health Day at the COP 28 UN Climate Conference, the International Longevity Centre has published some new analysis which finds that countries that have higher environmental performance are happier and live well for longer.

The ILC’s Healthy Ageing and Prevention Index ranks 121 countries on six healthy ageing metrics: life span, health span, work span, income, environmental performance, and happiness. Data points along the graph below are colour-coded to represent their overall ranking on the Index. For instance, the UK has a relatively high ranking across all six metrics and is in 16th position on the Index and therefore is colour-coded green. (The UK’s ranking is even higher when looking at health, happiness and environmental performance – it comes 4th.)

In this analysis, the ILC has studied the relationship between two metrics: health span (healthy life expectancy) and environmental performance to see how this impacts happiness. Isoquants are used to help us understand all the different combinations of inputs (health span and environmental performance) that produce the same output (happiness).

*To allow for easy comparison, health span and environmental performance for each country is expressed as a proportion of whichever country performs best on that metric. For instance, Japan is ranked 1st for health span (84.3 years) and therefore has a value of 100% on the graph. All other countries are then assigned their proportional value using Japan’s 84.3 years as the benchmark. Happiness is measured using isoquants and therefore shows us expected, rather than true levels of happiness.

The graph demonstrates that health span and environmental performance are strongly correlated and also produce happier societies.

The top 10 countries which have the best combination of health, happiness and environmental performance are:

There are trade-offs, however. Countries could have similar isoquants of happiness but have a higher health span and lower environmental performance or they could have a lower health span and higher environmental performance. The countries labelled in the graph are to give an overview of countries from across our Index.

Arunima Himawan, Senior Health Research Lead said:

“Health is impacted by many non-medical factors, including our environment. We welcome the collaboration between COP28 and WHO to drive forward action on health and climate change and engage with actors from civil society and business to bring the climate-health agenda into the mainstream. In an ageing society, it is imperative that we take a multi-sectoral approach to improving health outcomes and our analysis and Index work clearly demonstrates why such an approach is needed.”

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Media contacts

ILC – Press@ilcuk.org.uk or +44 (0) 7736 124 096. Spokespeople are available on request.

Sources

The ILC’s Healthy Ageing and Prevention Index ranks 121 countries against six indicators including life span and health span. Prevention Index – ILCUK

ILC-Introducing-the-Healthy-Ageing-and-Prevention-Index-1.pdf (ilcuk.org.uk)

COP28 Health Day (who.int)