Are Zimbabweans the fourth unhappiest people in the world?

Zimbabweans are the fourth unhappiest people in the world according to the World Happiness Report 2023 which was released yesterday to mark World Happiness Day.

Zimbabwe was ranked 134 out of the 137 countries surveyed and was only better than Sierra Leone, Lebanon and Afghanistan.

According to the report the measurement of subjective well-being relies on three indicators:

life evaluations, positive emotions, and negative emotions.

Life evaluations, according to the report, are based on theGallup World Poll, which asks respondents to evaluate their current life as a whole using the image of a ladder, with the best possible life for them as a 10 and worst possible as a 0. Typically, around 1 000 responses are gathered annually for each country. Weights are used to construct population-representative national averages for each year in each country. The happiness rankings are based on a three-year average of these life evaluations.

Positive emotions are derived from the average of individual yes or no answers about three emotions: laughter, enjoyment, and interest; while negative emotions are from average of individual yes or no answers about three emotions: worry, sadness, and anger.

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