Ghana drops in latest world happiness ranking

Ghana has been ranked 111th on a United Nations (UN) ranking of the happiest 146 countries in the world.

This indicates a drop of 16 places on the World Happiness Report, a publication of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

The country placed 95th in the 2021 World Happiness ranking.

The ranking was based on factors that tend to lead to greater happiness and metrics including GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity and perceptions of corruption.

The report which was compiled by a group of independent experts acting in their personal capacities was also based on life evaluations from the Gallup World Poll.

African perspective

No African country was ranked among the top 50 nations, with Mauritius ranking the highest in 52nd place – dipping two places from the 2021 edition of the report.

Other African countries that were ranked higher than Ghana included Libya (86th), Ivory Coast (88th), South Africa (91st), Gambia (93rd), Algeria (96th), Liberia (97th), Congo Brazzaville (99th) and Morocco (100th)

The remaining countries were Mozambique (101st), Cameroon (102nd), Senegal (103rd), Niger (104th), Gabon (106th), Guinea (109th) with Nigeria ranking behind Ghana in 118th place.

World ranking

For the fifth year in a row, Finland ranked the world’s happiest country ahead of its neighbours Denmark (2nd), followed by Iceland (3rd)

Switzerland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg took places 4 through 6, Sweden and Norway were seventh and eighth, respectively.

Israel placed ninth and New Zealand rounded out the top 10.

Meanwhile, Canada was ranked 15th followed by the United States (16th) and the United Kingdom (17th).