Economic Performance, Happiness, and Sustainable Development in OECD Countries

Economic progress has pushed human beings to pay greater attention on their happiness, and various indicators to measure it have been created with the OECD’s Better Life Index one of the most famous. This research uses the entropy method to divide the original 20 items of the Better Life Index into four categories (economic, environmental, social, and well-being). The Sustainable Development Goals promoted by the United Nations in recent years also include the same four aspects. Therefore, this study evaluates the efficiency performance of the 34 OECD member countries under these factors from 2013 to 2017 and analyzes their residents’ happiness and sustainable development. The findings are as follows. (1) The overall efficiency of Australia, Belgium, Iceland, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Switzerland, and United States is good, and their people’s happiness is high. (2) Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Mexico, Slovak Republic, and Turkey exhibit poor economic efficiency. (3) Chile, Greece, Israel, Mexico, and Turkey present poor environmental efficiency. (4) Mexico has poor social index efficiency. (4) The well-being efficiency of Estonia, Hungary, and Turkey is poor. (5) Lastly, 17 out of 34 countries have good sustainable development.