Kenya has been ranked as the happiest country in East Africa, according to a report released today.
Denmark overtook Switzerland as the world’s happiest place, in the report prepared by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the Earth Institute at Columbia University which showed Syria, Afghanistan and eight sub-Saharan Africa countries as the 10 least happy places to live.
In East Africa, South Sudan ranks as the second happiest country followed by Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. Kenya is, however, not among the top 10 happiest countries in Africa, with Algeria being the continent’s top ranking nation.
Kenya is at position 12. Mauritius comes in as the second happiest country followed by Libya, Somalia, Tunisia, Nigeria, Zambia, Namibia, Ethiopia and South Africa. The world’s top 10 this year were Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Canada, Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, and Sweden. Denmark was in third place last year, behind Switzerland and Iceland.
The report urges nations regardless of wealth to tackle inequality and protect the environment. The bottom 10 were Madagascar, Tanzania, Liberia, Guinea, Rwanda, Benin, Afghanistan, Togo, Syria and Burundi.
The United States came in at 13, the United Kingdom at 23, France at 32, and Italy at 50. “There is a very strong message for my country, the United States, which is very rich, has gotten a lot richer over the last 50 years, but has gotten no happier,” said Prof Jeffrey Sachs, head of the SDSN and special advisor to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
While the differences between countries where people are happy and those where they are not could be scientifically measured, “we can understand why and do something about it,” Sachs, one of the report’s authors, told Reuters in an interview in Rome.
“The message for the United States is clear. For a society that just chases money, we are chasing the wrong things. Our social fabric is deteriorating, social trust is deteriorating, faith in government is deteriorating,” he said. Aiming to “survey the scientific underpinnings of measuring and understanding subjective well-being,” the report, now in its fourth edition, ranks 157 countries by happiness levels using factors such as per capita gross domestic product (GDP) and healthy years of life expectancy.
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