The World Happiness Report is out, and Ghana is ranked 120 in the world’s happiest countries in 2024. This is not good news at all for Ghana, with the lowest scores.
For the first time, this year’s report included separate rankings by age group, and it brings bad news about life satisfaction among young people in some parts of the world.
According to the reports, happiness has dropped drastically among young people in Africa. The youth are now less happy than the old which led Ghana to get the low scores on the list.
That is according to the annual report that marks the United Nations International Day of Happiness on March 20.
The report draws on global survey data from people in more than 140 countries. Countries are ranked on happiness based on their average life evaluations over the three preceding years, in this case, 2021 to 2023. The report is a partnership of Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and an editorial board.
The survey asks each participant to score their life as a whole, considering what they value, said John Helliwell, emeritus professor of economics at the Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia, and a founding editor of the World Happiness Report.
The report looks at six key variables to help explain life evaluations: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and perceptions of corruption.
John Helliwell said the low scores among the young in those countries aren’t a matter of less education or lower income or more ill health.
“It’s what they think about their lives. So it’s a good question,” he said. Helliwell attributes the drop in part to the information young people in those four primarily English-speaking nations are consuming.
“They’re hearing the news that’s making them unhappy and they may be sharing it and that may make them unhappy too,” he said.
And it’s the nature of what’s happening, Helliwell said.
“Almost whatever institution you’re in, people in North America seem to be fighting over rights, responsibilities and who should be doing what to improve things and who is to blame for things not going well in the past,” Helliwell said.
Discussions seem to be about “who to blame and staking out rights and privileges, and not so much about breaking down barriers and working together to construct something, not by rules and lawsuits, but by simply working together to improve things,” he said.
Still, it’s not all bad news for young people.
“Overall, globally, young people aged 15-24 experienced improved life satisfaction between 2006 and 2019, and stable life satisfaction since then,” the report says. “But the picture varied by region. Youth wellbeing fell in North America, Western Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia. In the rest of the world, it rose.”
Another positive takeaway related to young people: The spike in benevolence during the pandemic among all generations was especially pronounced among young people, Helliwell said, and that benevolence has endured.
“So that’s encouraging. Even though in some countries they’re not very happy, they’re still capable of and willing to engage in benevolent acts for others. And that gives you hope for the future.”
See the result below;
Source: Ghanafuo.com
