Note: Every Thursday I bring “back to life” a post from the old LatiNone blog. Today’s post was originally published on May 14, 2011-JNR

From Gallup:

a new Gallup analysis finds countries with the highest wellbeing tend to be the most peaceful countries in the world and those with the lowest wellbeing are the least likely to be peaceful. Gallup’s life evaluation measure, which gauges wellbeing, correlates strongly with the Failed States Index and the World Bank’s Political Stability and Absence of Violence dimension, suggesting a clear linear relationship between peace and high wellbeing.

Not coincidentally, these countries are also highly secular. And the link between secularism, peace and wellbeing is one that is found in social science. In fact, Pitzer College professor and founder of the new Secularism Studies major, Phil Zuckerman, did a video lecture on this for ISSSC a while ago.

While there are certainly other factors involve in wellbeing and peace, secularism (and secularity) should be atop of social science explanations.