Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigeria has been ranked as the 95th country out of 137 with the happiest population based on six variables, including GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and corruption.
The report, World Happiness Report 2023, showed that Nigeria scored 4.981 out of a possible 10.
The report was written by experts including John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Lara B. Aknin, and Shun Wang.
In the piece, the experts noted that, “Once happiness is accepted as the goal of government, this has other profound effects on institutional practices. Health, especially mental health, assumes even more priority, as does the quality of work, family life, and community.”
Finland continues to occupy the top spot, for the sixth year in a row, with a score that is significantly ahead of all other countries.
Denmark remains in the 2nd spot, with a confidence region bounded by 2nd and 4th. Among the rest of the countries in the top twenty, the confidence regions for their ranks cover five to ten countries. Iceland is 3rd, and with its smaller sample size, it has a confidence region from 2nd to 7th. Israel is in 4th position, up five positions from last year, with a confidence range between 2nd and 8th.
The 5th through 8th positions were filled by the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland. The top ten were rounded out by Luxembourg and New Zealand.
Austria and Australia follow in 11th and 12th positions, as last year, both within the likely range of 8th to 16th. They were followed by Canada, up two places from last year’s lowest-ever ranking.
The next four positions were filled by Ireland, the United States, Germany, and Belgium, all with ranks securely in the top twenty, as shown by the rank range. The rest of the top 20 included Czechia, the United Kingdom, and Lithuania, 18th to 20th.
The same countries tend to appear in the top twenty year after year, with 19 of this year’s top 20 also being there last year. The exception is Lithuania, which has steadily risen over the past six years, from 52nd in 2017 to 20th this year.
Throughout the rankings, except at the very top and the very bottom, the three-year average scores are close enough to one another that significant differences are found only between country pairs that are sometimes many positions apart in the rankings.
War-torn Afghanistan (137) and Lebanon (136) remained the two unhappiest countries, according to the survey.
Others at the bottom of the list were Zambia 128, Tanzania 129, Comoros 130, Malawi 131, Botswana 132, Congo Democratic Republic 133, Zimbabwe 134, and Sierra Leone 135.
The researchers said people’s evaluation of happiness had remained “remarkably resilient’’ in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic, with global averages from 2020 to 2022 just as high as those in the pre-pandemic years of 2017 to 2019.
