Why Kenya falls among world’s unhappiest lot

Kenyans are among the world’s unhappiest people according to a new report.

The annual United Nations sponsored Happiness Report rated Finland as the world’s happiest country, for the sixth year running. Afghanistan on the other hand, remains bottom of the 2024 World Happiness Report, a league table of almost 140 countries.

Ranking shows the levels of unhappiness among Kenyans continues to rise after the country dropped four spots from position 111 to 114 in just one year.

According to the rankings, Kenya scored merely 4.5 points on a scale of 0 to 10 over a period of three years.

Kenya comes a distant 17th in Africa on the happiness list, behind South Africa, Algeria, Congo, Mozambique, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Senegal, Nigeria, Cameroon, Namibia, Morocco, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Gambia and Chad.

However, Kenyans are relatively happier compared to their neighbours in Ugandan and Tanzanian who are at position 117 and 131 respectively.

For the first time since 2012, the US and United Kingdom have been ousted from the top 20 happiest countries by new entrants, Costa Rica and Kuwait in positions 12 and 13 respectively.

America dropped eight points from number 15 to 23 while UK lost one spot from position 19 to 20.

The ranking was based on citizens’ perceptions of among other issues, social economic parameters that influenced their way of life. They included freedom to make life choices where Kenyans were asked if they were satisfied or dissatisfied with their freedom to choose what they do with their lives.

Kenyans and citizens of countries featured in the report were asked about their perception of corruption in their respective governments and businesses in their locality and how widespread it was.

Further, to ascertain the level of social support among participants to determine their degree of happiness, they were asked; “If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them, or not?”

The Happiness Report also focused on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) based on citizens’ purchasing power, healthy life expectancy at birth and their generosity.

Here, they were asked if they had donated money to charity in the month before the research was being conducted.

Report showed that in Kenya, general happiness is higher among the youth aged below 30 years and is least among people over 60 years categorised as the upper middle age group.

Across the four age group categories comprising the young (under 30), Kenya is at position 109 while in lower middle age of 30 to 44 years, it is placed at position 119.

Additionally, among the upper middle age of 45 to 59 years, the country is at position 123 while in the age of above 60 years, it is ranked 119th.

Like their counterparts in Sub-Saharan Africa, Kenyan women aged 30 years and below are happier than men of the same age while women aged 60 are the unhappiest compared to men of the same age.
Both genders

The level of happiness among both genders is equal among the middle age groups of between 30 to 50 before it starts to decline among women.

The report also found that women have the highest level of negative emotions across the world across all age groups under the review.

“In South Asia, negative emotions are more frequent than elsewhere in the world, especially at higher ages and for females. In Sub-Saharan Africa, they are equally frequent for males and females under the age of 30, and rise with age for both genders thereafter, by more for females than males,” the report.

Compared to the rest of the world, Africans across the four age groups living in Sub-Saharan Africa as well as Latin Americans aged 60 and above are the unhappiest. The report also investigated generosity by comparing the pre-pandemic and Covid-era frequencies of benevolent acts by birth cohort. The acts include; donations, volunteering and helping of strangers

It divided respondents into three cohorts: those born before 1965 (boomers and their predecessors), those born between 1965 and 1980 inclusive (Gen X), and those born after 1980 (millennials and Gen Z).

“Before Covid, the helping of strangers was most common among the younger cohorts, and lowest for those born before 1965, perhaps reflecting in part their lesser ability to be out and about.

Charitable donations were less frequent in the younger generations than for the other age groups, perhaps reflecting their lower disposable incomes. Volunteering was fairly equal in the three generations,” the report explained.

After the Covid pandemic, acts of benevolence increased from pre-pandemic levels, and they are more among the Millennials and Gen Z, suggesting that Millennials are even more likely than their predecessors to increase their benevolent acts when a new need like Covid arises.