A global ranking of peacefulness



QUANTIFYING peace is a bit like trying to describe how happiness smells: people generally recognise it when they come across it, which rules out the need for further examination. This has not deterred the Institute for Economics and Peace, a think-tank, which has developed a global peace index in conjunction with the Economist Intelligence Unit, our sister organisation. The latest index, released on June 12th, is composed of 23 indicators ranging from murder rates to weapons imports to conflicts being fought. The two maps below show how this index scored the world in 2007 and in 2012. It throws up some surprising results, such as that China was more peaceful than America in 2007. If some of the overall findings might seem odd, then part of the appeal of the index is that readers can examine each of the variables in turn and think about how much weight to add to each. It is available to play around with here.