Nigerians were worse off last year than they were in 2020 as the country has been ranked the world’s 11th most miserable country for 2021.
The latest Hanke’s Annual Misery Index, which analysed 156 countries, showed that Nigeria moved from 15th in the previous year. The index modified by Steve Hanke, a popular professor of applied economics at the Johns Hopkins University, also shows that the ranking placed Africa’s biggest economy as the fourth most miserable country in the continent.
According to Hanke, his version of the misery index is the sum of the year-end unemployment, inflation, and bank-lending rates, minus the annual percentage change in real GDP per capita.
“Higher readings on the first three elements are ‘bad’ and make people more miserable,” he said.
Analysts have said they were not surprised as the country’s high inflation and unemployment rate, which are among the highest in the world, mirrored the high level of misery in the country.
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“The ranking is spot on in terms of the fact that Nigeria is one of the most miserable countries to live largely due to the inflation, which has worsened over the last one year, and also unemployment is worse. Although after COVID-19, we saw a temporary relief, it is still high and the rate of recovery relative to the rest of the world is slow,” Ayorinde Akinloye, an investment and research analyst at United Capital Plc, said.
Akinloye added that the external factors such as insecurity showed that the affirmation was not farfetched.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the country’s inflation, which measures the rate of increase of commodity prices, was 15.7 percent in February 2022, while unemployment was at a record high of 33.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020.
“People are getting worse off, with high inflation and worsening poverty level caused by a bad macro environment,” Moses Ojo, a Lagos-based economic analyst, said.
Apart from Hanke’s index, a recent 2022 World Happiness Report showed that Nigeria recorded the worst performance since 2012 as it ranked 118th out of 150 countries.
In a recent report, the World Bank noted that the country’s surging inflation rate had pushed more people into poverty.
According to the bank, before inflation started rising steadily, there were 82.9 million poor Nigerians, but the number has risen to 90.1 million in 2021 and is projected to hit 95.1 million in 2022.
“With real per capita GDP growth being negative in all sectors in 2020, poverty is projected to have deepened for the current poor, while those households that were just above the poverty line prior to the crisis would be likely to fall into poverty,” the Washington-based bank said.
According to the index, Cuba holds the inglorious title of 2021’s most-miserable country, followed by Venezuela, Sudan, Lebanon and Zimbabwe, while the least miserable countries are Libya, Malta, Ireland, the United Kingdom and Singapore.
“It is essential for policymakers to have a read of their constituents’ well-being, as viewed through the lens of economic statistics,” Hanke said.
