Nigeria has ranked as the 102nd happiest nation in the world out of 143 countries, the World Happiness Report released on Wednesday disclosed.
The findings, announced to mark the UN’s International Day of Happiness, are powered by data from the Gallup World Poll and analyzed by some of the world’s leading well-being scientists.
Persecondnews reports that the latest ranking shows that the country has slid by seven positions in one year, as it ranked 95 in the 2023 edition of the same report.
Nigeria came behind countries like Iran and Azerbaijan, which occupied the 100 and 101 positions, respectively.
Finland tops the overall list for the seventh successive year as the happiest nation in the world, according to the report, while Mauritius emerged as the happiest African country by being in the 70th position on the global ranking.
Aside from the overall ranking, for the first time, the report gives separate rankings by age group, in many cases varying widely from the overall rankings.
In Nigeria, the young ones under the age of 30 are happier, as the country ranks 108 in this category out of 143 countries, while in the adult category, the country ranks 130, indicating that the older Nigerians are less happy.
Commenting 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.”
Observing the state of happiness among the world’s children and adolescent population, the researchers found that, globally, young people aged 15 to 24 report higher life satisfaction than older adults, but the gap is narrowing in Europe and recently reversed in North America.
Findings also suggest that the well-being of 15–24-year-olds has fallen in North America, Western Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia since 2019, but in the rest of the world, it has risen.
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