Nigeria ranked 6th most miserable country in the world

Nigeria has been ranked the 6th most miserable country by Steve Hanke, an economist from John Hopkins University in Baltimore, United States.

The ranking is titled, Hanke’s Annual Misery Index 2018: The World’s Saddest (And Happiest) Countries.

According to an article he wrote in Forbes magazine March 28 edition, Steve Hanke notes that economic indices such as unemployment, inflation and the rates banks charge on loans are used to calculate Misery Index.

In the sphere of economics, misery tends to flow from high inflation, steep borrowing costs and unemployment, Hanke warns.

Hanke, in his explanatory note wrote:

The original Misery Index was just a simple sum of a nation’s annual inflation rate and its unemployment rate.

The Index has been modified several times, first by Robert Barro of Harvard and then by myself.

My modified Misery Index is the sum of the unemployment, inflation and bank lending rates, minus the percentage change in real GDP per capita.

Higher readings on the first three elements are ‘bad’ and make people more miserable. These are offset by a ‘good’ (GDP per capita growth), which is subtracted from the sum of the ‘bads.

A higher Misery Index score reflects a higher level of ‘misery,’ and it’s a simple enough metric that a busy president, without time for extensive economic briefings, can understand at a glance.

Countries ranking as least miserable in the world on the 2018 Misery Index are Thailand and Hungary, having ranked 95th and 94th respectively of the 95 countries ranked by Hanke.

Venezuela, Argentina, Iran, Brazil and Turkey lead in that order, while Nigeria is sixth.