KINGSTON, Jamaica – Jamaica was given a misery index score of 20.7 per cent and ranked the 17th most miserable country according to the Business Insider.
The score, which was taken from 2014 data available at the CIA World Factbook, was generated from a sum of the country’s inflation and unemployment rates.
The formula for the ‘Misery Index was created by Economist Arthur Okun as a means of deducing if a country is miserable.
The higher the number, the more ‘miserable’ a country is deemed to be. In this case, Jamaica had an inflation rate of 7.1 per cent and an unemployment rate of 13.6 per cent.
“Jamaica's economy relies heavily on the services sector, including tourism. Unfortunately, the country suffers from high crime and corruption and a high unemployment — which leads to more crime,†said the Business Insider.
They added that the Government is battling a two-headed hydra — it needs to achieve fiscal discipline to maintain debt payments and it wants to confront the serious crime problem.
Other countries included in the list are Venezuela which ranked number one with a misery index of 70 per cent. It was followed by Syria, Djibouti, Argentina, Yemen, Lesotho, South Africa, Macedonia, Serbia, Iran, Greece, Egypt, Mongolia, Ukraine, Spain, Croatia and Tunisia respectively.
