By Taonga Sabola:
The latest World Happiness Report has ranked Malawi among seven saddest nations in the world.
The report, authored by John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey D. Sachs, comes at a time Malawians continue to swim in abject poverty and unemployment despite several efforts by authorities and development partners to lift the country out of suffering.
According to the World Happiness Report 2019, Malawi ranks on position 150 out of 156 happiest countries in the world.
The report shows that Malawians are only happier than citizens of Yemen, Rwanda, Tanzania, Afghanistan, Central African Republic and South Sudan.
Government Spokesperson, Henry Mussa, was not immediately available for comment on Malawi’s ranking Wednesday.
The report shows that the happiest people in the world are found in Finland, followed by Denmark, Norway, Iceland and the Netherlands.
Neighbours, Mozambique and Zambia rank on position 123 and 138, respectively.
The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness that ranks 156 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be.
This year’s World Happiness Report focuses on happiness and the community: how happiness has evolved over the past dozen years, with a focus on technologies, social norms, conflicts and government policies that have driven those changes.
The report draws correlation between happiness and government, saying governments set the institutional and policy framework in which individuals, businesses and governments themselves operate.
It says what governments do affect happiness, and in turn happiness of citizens in most countries determines what kind of governments they support.
It was, however, quick to note that the effects of government actions on happiness are often difficult to separate from the influences of other things happening at the same time.
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