- Title
- Waiting for happiness in Africa
- Creator
- Moller, Valerie
- Creator
- Roberts, Benjamin J
- Creator
- Tiliouine, Habib
- Creator
- Loschky, Jay
- Date Issued
- 2017
- Date
- 2017
- Type
- text
- Type
- book
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67225
- Identifier
- vital:29061
- Identifier
- https://s3.amazonaws.com/sdsn-whr2017/HR17-Ch4_lr.pdf
- Description
- publisher version
- Description
- From Introduction: Are the people in Africa really among the least happy in the world? And if African countries do have a ‘happiness deficit’, what are the prospects of Africa achieving happiness in the near future? These are questions we shall try to address in this chapter. The World Happiness Report (WHR), published since 2012, has found that happiness is less evident in Africa than in other regions of the world. It reports Gallup World Poll (GWP) ratings of happiness, measured on the ‘ladder of life’, a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 indicating greatest happiness. On the map of the Geography of Happiness, published in an earlier World Happiness Report Update 2015, the happiest countries in the world are shaded green, the unhappiest red. Africa stands out as the unhappiest continent, being coloured almost entirely in shades of glaring red (See Fig. 4.1). In 2017, the WHR reports that average ladder scores for over four in five African countries are below the mid-point of the scale (see Fig. 4.2). And only two African countries have made significant gains in happiness over the past decade . There are also considerable inequalities in life evaluations in African countries, and this inequality in happiness has increased over the past years . In this chapter, we shall tentatively seek a number of explanations for the unhappiness on the African continent, which is home to about 16% of the world’s population. It will be no easy task to identify factors that may have shaped perceptions of well-being among the 1.2 billion African people who live in 54 nation states with different historical, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds. Nonetheless, we shall attempt to describe some of the positive and negative experiences in the lives of people in African countries that likely impact on personal well-being. We shall also try to identify the prospects for change and development that could spell hope for increasing the happiness of African people in future.
- Format
- 38 pages
- Format
- Publisher
- United Nations
- Language
- English
- Relation
- World Happiness Report
- Relation
- Moller, V., Roberts, B.J., Tiliouine, H. & Loschky, J. (2017) Waiting for happiness in Africa. In: Helliwell, J., Layard, R. & Sachs, J. (eds).World Happiness Report 2017. New York: United Nations. 84-120
- Relation
- World Happiness Report volume 2017 number 84 120 2017
- Rights
- United Nations
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the National Library of South Africa Copyright Act (http://www.nlsa.ac.za/downloads/Copyright%20Act.pdf)
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RU Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER)
Moller, Valerie (Prof Emerita)
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