Nigeria is the 102nd happiest country in the world out of 143 countries, according to the World Happiness Report, which was issued on Wednesday.
In the 2023 edition of the same survey, the nation was rated 95th, indicating a 7-position decline over the previous year. Nigeria trailed behind nations like Azerbaijan and Iran, which are ranked 100 and 101, respectively.
The results, which were released in conjunction with the UN’s International Day of Happiness, were examined by a number of the top well-being scientists in the world using information from the Gallup World Poll.
According to the research, Finland has been the happiest country in the world for seven years running.
Mauritius, which ranks 70th in the world, has been named the happiest country in Africa.
The study provides age group rankings separately for the first time, which frequently deviate significantly from the overall ranks.
Nigeria, which is ranked 108th out of 143 countries in this category, has happier youth under the age of thirty.
Nigeria is ranked 130th in the adult category, suggesting that older Nigerians are not as happy.
The report states that the rankings are derived from the average assessment of each population’s quality of life over a period of three years.
Then, using variables like GDP, life expectancy, having someone to rely on, a sense of freedom, generosity, and views of corruption, interdisciplinary specialists from the fields of economics, psychology, sociology, and beyond try to explain the changes across nations and across time.
While the rankings themselves are solely based on respondents’ responses to questions about how they would grade their own lives, these elements aid in explaining the variations throughout countries.
Speaking on the report, Prof John F. Helliwell, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia, and a founding Editor of the World Happiness Report, said:
“The broad country coverage and annual surveys of the Gallup World Poll provide an unmatched source of data about the quality of lives all over the globe.
“There are now enough years of data, going back to 2006, to enable us this year to plausibly separate age and generational patterns for happiness.
“We found some pretty striking results. There is a great variety among countries in the relative happiness of the younger, older, and in-between populations.
“Hence the global happiness rankings are quite different for the young and the old, to an extent that has changed a lot over the last dozen years.”
Researchers that looked at the level of happiness among children and adolescents around the world discovered that, generally speaking, young people between the ages of 15 and 24 report higher levels of life satisfaction than older individuals; however, this difference is closing in Europe and has recently reversed in North America.
