The Happy Planet Index, announced by the UK-based New Economics Foundation on July 4, reveals a surprising picture of the relative wealth and progress of nations. Latin America tops the Index with Costa Rica being termed the greenest and happiest country. Nine of the ten highest-scoring nations are Latin American.

The Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Guatemala, Vietnam, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Brazil and Honduras stand second to tenth on the table of the happiest places of the planet. In Asia, China stands 20th, Singapore 49th, South Korea 68th and Japan 75th.

The top in Euro is the Netherlands, which comes in at 43rd. Meanwhile, New Zealand stands 103rd and the US at 114th out of the 143 nations surveyed.

The index presents the results of the global compilation of the Happy Planet Index. It is based on data gathered form 143 countries around the world. The report shows that globally, people are still far from achieving good lives within the earth’s finite resource limits.