World Happiness Report : Moroccans are less and less happy

Last week, the world was celebrating the International Day of Happiness. On this occasion the World Happiness Report, conducted by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, was released. The 9th edition of this report «studies science, measures and understands well-being subjectively».

Several criteria are taken into account to produce this report: GDP per capita, social assistance, healthy life expectancy, social freedom, generosity and the absence of corruption.

After losing eight places last year, Morocco continues its downfall. Thus, from the 97th out of 149 countries, recorded last year, the Kingdom is ranked 106th out of 153 countries for the 2021 edition. Its score also drops to 4,918 points.

For changes in happiness between 2020 and 2017-2019, the study indicates that Morocco is ranked 80th, with a negative evolution of -0.126, while the score of the MENA region has experienced a positive evolution (+0.042) over the aforementioned period.

Morocco, less happy than its African neighbors

The comparison with the Arab countries indicates that the Kingdom comes 6th in the MENA region, behind Bahrain (22nd), the United Arab Emirates (25th), Saudi Arabia (26th), Kuwait (47th) and Libya. (80th). The kingdom is ahead of Algeria (109th), Tunisia (122nd) and Mauritania (134th).

In Africa, the Kingdom also fell to the 13th place, behind Mauritius (50th), Libya (80th), Congo (83rd), Côte d'Ivoire (85th), Cameroon (91st), Senegal ( 92nd), Ghana (95th), Niger (96th), Gambia (98th), Benin (99th), Guinea (102nd), and South Africa (103rd).

The top of the podium is respectively occupied by Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland and the Netherlands, which dethroned Norway (6th), while Lesotho (145th), Botswana, Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Afghanistan (149th) come at the bottom of the ranking.

For the writers of the report, based on a wide variety of data, the most important source of which is the Gallup World Poll, «2020 has been a year like no other. So, this year's report focused on the effects of Covid-19 and how people around the world fared. With 2 million deaths, the pandemic has left «economic insecurity, anxiety, disruption to all aspects of life and, for many people, stress and significant mental and physical health issues», they regretted.