What makes good government?
And if the aim of good government is a peaceful and contented society, it's worth also asking: what makes people happy?
As you'd expect, being well off helps - but being a rich country is not enough. Clearer trends start to emerge when you look at the average standard of living.
A high GDP per capita is positively correlated with a good score on the World Happiness Report.
Higher GDP per capita is also positively correlated with a higher Government Integrity Score
(especially when smaller countries are filtered out)
(with a clear correlation in Asia)
This suggests that there's a relationship between GDP per capita and government integrity.
So what's linked with a higher GDP per capita? As it turns out, higher education spending per person is positively correlated.
(a trend that is especially clear if you filter out the countries with smaller populations).
And there's a clear relationship between health expenditure per person and a higher score on the World Happiness Report.
And the countries with a lower score on the GINI Index (meaning less inequality) tend to be more developed, particularly those with higher government spending (as a % of GDP).
(interestingly, Australia scores best on inequality out of all the non-European countries).
One interesting emerging trend was the power of extended schooling.
A higher school life expectancy tends, in general, to be linked with a better score on GDP per capita.
And the higher the school life expectancy, the better the score on World Happiness.
What are the lessons here? Maybe it's like our parents taught us: we should stay in school and learn to share.
There are outliers, of course (looking at you Costa Rica). And correlation is not causation.
So what makes good government? There is no easy answer but policy focused on health, education and reducing inequality would be a great start.