Special Report: How to be small and successful in Latin America (ISSN 17414474)

Writing for the Harvard International Review in 2015 María José Sada described Costa Rica as Latin America’s success story, with high levels of economic growth, foreign direct investment, and literacy. Sada noted that on some indicators the country performed better than developed countries (in 2000 the World Health Organisation ranked Costa Rica’s universal health care system as better than that of the United States). Costa Rica also had ranked first in recent editions the Happy Planet Index, which combined life expectancy, wellbeing, and ecological data to calculate sustainable wellbeing.