Venezuela has been catapulted to the number one position with a score of 106.3. High and rising consumer prices are said to be the bane of Venezuela, otherwise an oil rich country.
A World Misery Index has begun to be compiled. Prof. Steve Hanke, who teaches Applied Economics at the Johns Hopkins University has started compiling the data and ranking the world nations according to their miserable status. Cato’s Misery Index ranks 108 countries based on data from the Economist Intelligence Unit. He factors in the nations’ inflation, lending rates, and unemployment figures together and then subtracts year on year per capital GDP growth to ‘Misery”.
Venezuela has been catapulted to the number one position with a score of 106.3. High and rising consumer prices are said to be the bane of Venezuela, otherwise an oil rich country. It is 40 point ahead of the second ranker Argentina which scored 68 points. Again, even this South American nation suffers from relentless price rise. War torn Syria and Ukraine stand at third and fourth position with 64 and 52 points respectively. Iran and Brazil occupy fifth and sixth position. Both suffer from rampant unemployment.
India is on 38th position but Pakistan is more miserable than its neighbour and is at 33rd place. Source of their misery is high interest rates. The five least miserable are Brunei, Switzerland, China, Taiwan, and Japan. The United States ranks 95th, which makes it the 14th least miserable nation of the 108 countries on the table.
Curiously, even Saudi Arabia figures in the list, on 47th position, a place ahead of Bangladesh. Both have high unemployment.
Here is the ranking of 29 countries that are top-listed in the table (from Venezuela being the most miserable to Paraguay on the 29th position.)
(Source: http://www.cato.org/blog/world-misery-index-108-countries
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