Maldives
In the Maldives, the life expectancy is 79.9 years and many factors influence this. Compared to all the other countries in the world, this life expectancy age is quite high with the Czech Republic and Mayotte also sharing this age.
Happiness wise, the Maldives are a relatively happy country. In a ranking of the world’s happiest countries [1], which includes 156 countries, the Maldives rank 87th. Also, Maldives’ Gross National Happiness ranks at 5.2 points [2], which is just below the average of all of the countries which is 5.48. In the country, the people live a simple, stress-free life which affects their happiness enormously but in a good way.
Although the Maldives is a relatively happy country, the equality isn’t that great. For example, it is mostly known in families that the men will go to work and earn the majority of the money, and the women stay at home and cook and clean. Women can also have jobs, but normally they are not as important as the men’s jobs and they earn half the salaries as men do. [3]. Females also have a quite a large problem with harassment, with a total of 96% of the women in the Maldives having reported being harassed on the streets [4].
The Maldives’ healthcare is also not the best. This is because although all islands have access to high-quality medical care facilities, only a few have up-to-date medical facilities meaning that if someone has a serious disease or illness, some people will have to be evacuated to a hospital overseas in either India or Sri Lanka to get proper medical care [5].
So overall, the Maldives has a rough population of 543,000 people [6], and is quite average for happiness in countries and is quite average for healthcare in countries as well. This affects life expectancy massively, as healthcare helps the people of the Maldives live a healthy lifestyle and the happiness affects their mental well beings and how they act every day.
[1] https://www.gfmag.com/global-data/non-economic-data/happiest-countries
[2] https://www.theglobaleconomy.com
[3] http://www.budgetmaldives.com/maldives/maldives-people/
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_Maldives
[6] https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/maldives-population
Afghanistan
Afghanistan is a country in Asia with a life expectancy of 66.0 years. This is extremely low, but very realistic due to all the issues in Afghanistan. It has a population of roughly 39 million which grows tremendously every single day [1].
For about roughly 20 years now, there have been war This is mainly due to Afghan being home to deadly terror groups that have caused extreme problems for the country [2]. One of the many problems that have been caused from these war(s), is that Afghan is one of the poorest countries in the world with 42% of people who live there live in poverty, and another 20% being at a high risk of falling into poverty [3].
Healthcare in Afghan is also shocking due to poverty. It has improved a bit overtime but is still not the best. 25% of children die before their 5th birthday, and Afghan has the 2nd highest maternal mortality rate in the world. This doesn’t help life expectancy at all due to the lack of healthcare and the people not being able to live a proper healthy life.
On the Gross National Happiness scale, Afghan has a score of 2.57 [4] meaning it is one of the unhappiest countries in the world. This all due to the depression of war, loosing children/ family members, inequality, poverty and many more.
Overall, the life expectancy in Afghan is extremely low due to the lack of healthcare, war and depression in the country. These factors all affect it massively and for the majority of the people who live in Afghan, it is not a good experience.
[1] https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/afghanistan-population/
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-49192495