One clear explanation of 'geopolitics' that I found is by Greg Cruey at: http://goasia.about.com/od/countriesaz/a/asiadefined.htm, where he says: "Geopolitical units have replaced continents in the public mind. The Middle East, for example, extending from Iran through the Arabian Peninsula and across North Africa, is not a continent. Algeria is in the Middle East, and on the continent of Africa. Iran is also in the Middle East, but on the continent of Asia. The middle East is not unique in this; terms like "Central America" and "Latin America" are both intended to replace geographic categories by using criteria other than just geography. And until after WWII, Southeast Asia was an unthought of idea: Burma and Thailand were "Greater India" and Vietnam and Cambodia were Indo-China. Geography may not change much, but time and politics seem to change how we interpret it."

The proportion of the population who are aged 0 to 14 years can be found in the people category. As this proportion varies from 14 to 50 percent of the total population, you will need to look at the value for each of the countries you are investigating.

How rich is he? His net worth is greater than the 2002 GDP of all but 71 countries.

Fellow American billionaire S. Robson Walton of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is number 10 on the list, just ahead of the other Waltons at 11, 12 and 13. The Waltons’ combined wealth is over US$90 billion. That’s about the same as Belarus’s 2002 GDP, which was 57th-highest in the world.

All told, there are 691 billionaires in the world and their net worth is about US$2.2 trillion dollars (2002 GDP of fifth-place Germany, give or take US$40 billion).

Despite the fact that the United States only gives 0.06 percent of its GDP in aid to developing countries one survey found 40% of US citizens believe the country should cut foreign aid. This is probably because the average estimate of the Federal Budget going to foreign aid was 24%, overestimating the actual figure at least 20-fold. Respondants to the survey gave an average of 10% of the federal budget as an appropriate percentage that should be donated, but when asked what they felt if told the actual figure was only one percent of GDP, 13.2% thought it was "Way too little", 24.1% thought it was "A bit too little" and 43.5% figured it was "about right" (source). From the level of giving of other OECD countries you can infer these attitudes are reasonably common across international boundaries. Also, Wikipedia lists the 2003 donation of $15.7 billion from the government as the largest total amount donated by a single country.

This graph roughly mirrors that of economic aid per capita, which gives the average dollar amount per person of a country.

There is no apparent connection between how satisfied people are and how happy they are. Only four of the countries are present in the top 10 of Very Happy countries, with Switzerland falling from most satisfied country to tenth in the "Very Happy" list, while Canada drops from eigth to fifteenth and Finland plummets from ninth to twentyninth. However, satisfied people are less likely to say they are very unhappy, and six of the countries in the top 10 for Life Satisfaction are present in the top 10 of Net Happiness, and Iceland, Ireland and the Netherlands are distinguished by being near the top of both Life Satisfaction and Very Happy countries, and in the same order.