ABSTRACT
This chapter theorises and operationalises the individual, social and ecological dimensions for prosperity and the 'good life' at national level and empirically explores patterns of prosperity at the global scale. It explores how the countries of the world perform in providing prosperity or the 'good life'. Individual freedom and autonomy are an essential part of the Degrowth declaration and a major theme in human needs theory. In order to explore which groups of countries share similar characteristics as described by 'good life' indicators, the chapter applies Hierarchical Clustering on Principal Components (HCPC). The main relations between the ten 'good life' indicators can be described as interplay of three concepts: modernisation, anomie and extractivism. There is currently no 'good life' pattern without negative side-effects: modernisation and extractivism are both ecologically harmful processes, while anomie is associated with low scores on the social dimension.
