Cuba, Venezuela and Sudan are the world’s most miserable countries, according to the annual index conducted by Professor Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US.
The Annual Misery Index (HAMI) is one of the many methods used to measure people’s wellbeing and happiness around the world. This particular calculation is based on economic statistics: the sum of yearend unemployment, inflation and interest on bank loans minus the annual change in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Those numbers speak volumes about how sad or happy people are, Hanke said.
Due to a dramatic decrease compared to the HAMI 2020, Cuba is in the worst of all ranges of 2021. The island experienced inflation that exceeded thousand percent per year. Inflation seriously affects the calculation of the HAMI. In addition, inflation is a way of stealing wealth and the value of hours worked from a country’s citizens. “Of course, in Cuba, if you have party favors and you get a loan that has a negative real interest rate of about 1,219%, you’re not so unhappy,” Professor Hanke pointed out in an article in National Review magazine.
This is how this calculation turned out for Cuba:
HAMI = [Desempleo (3,7%) + Inflación (1221,8%) + Tasa de préstamos bancarios (2,3%)] Real GDP Growth (0.2%) = 1227.6.
Venezuela is now in the secondlowest ranking, having been number one after six years. Its inflation is 686.4% (down from a year earlier) and its unemployment and bank credit rates are the highest of the 156 countries on this list.
The thirdworst country is again Sudan, which staged a military coup in 2021, partly because it was unable to defuse inflationary pressures.
According to HAMI, the three least miserable countries are Libya, Malta and Ireland.
Libya is in an unexpected place due to special circumstances. The 2020 civil war was greatly detented in 2021 and oil export revenues increased by more than 300%. This has significantly boosted GDP growth per capita.
Malta has improved compared to last year because it is very stable in the numbers that go into the HAMI calculation and has the lowest inflation in Europe.
Ireland, a country that has opened up its economy widely in recent years and has a good business environment, had unemployment at 6.2%, inflation at 4.5% and bank lending at 2.9%, and its pro Per capita GDP growth was strong at 14%. .
The sources Professor Hanke uses to calculate the HAMI are the Economist Intelligence Unit, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the International Labor Organization and the central banks of the countries marked with an asterisk * in the list.