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Thursday, April 21, 2011

Kenyans ranked among the Saddest People in the World.

   Gallup released its global "wellbeing" survey yesterday and unsurprisingly Kenyans were ranked among the saddest in the world. Much to my consternation, Djibouti and Somali Land were found to be much happier than their other IGAD counterparts.

Only 6 percent of Kenyans are reported to be thriving and happy with their lives. A whopping 80% are struggling to get by while a further 16% are living in agony. 60% of Kenyans find it hard to put food on the table.

While the correlation between income and happiness has long been a subject of philosophical interest and hasn't been conclusively determined to be true or false, its not surprising that the happiest people in the world live in rich  Denmark (72%), Sweden (69%) and Canada (69%) respectively, while the unhappiest earthlings hail from poverty stricken nations in Sub-Saharan Africa.

With the current flux Kenyan politics is in, I don't think such surveys will bear important policy implications, therefore, maybe, just maybe, inflationary pressures will shift the human psychology of the average Kenyan and make him/her go 'Tunisian' over our inept leaders

My personal thinking is: happiness has a lot to do with spirituality and a person's sense of belonging, which would explain why more Somali Landers and Djiboutians are happier than Kenyans, Ugandans and Tanzanians.

Here are the countries where a majority of the people are happy



highest wellbeing.gif
And now the countries where less than 1 in 4 is happy

less than 25% thriving.gif

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