How happy is Tanzania compared to it’s neighbours? Photo: Daniel Hayduk
Tanzania is the 13th unhappiest country in the world, according to the 2015 World Happiness Report.
The report, published by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, places Tanzania at 146 out of 158 countries polled on happiness between 2012 and 2014.
Kenya placed 34th unhappiest while Uganda 18th came in as unhappiest, surrounded by many other Sub-Saharan Africa countries.
The bottom five unhappiest countries on earth are: Rwanda, Benin, Syria, Burundi and Togo.
The report, which named Switzerland as the happiest country, looks at key indicators such as: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity and freedom from corruption to provide an overview of a country’s ‘subjective well-being.’
“Average life evaluations in the top ten countries are more than twice as high as in the bottom ten, 7.4 compared to 3.4,” says the report, which is published every 18 months.
“The strength of the underlying social fabric, as represented by levels of trust and institutional strength, affects a society’s resiliency in response to economic and social crises,” says the report.
The report also shows that if a country faced with crises and disasters has underlying institutions and fabric of ‘sufficient quality’ that hard times would ‘lead to improvements rather than damage.’
Compared to previous data, Greece has fallen the furthest in happiness.
