How miserable are Malaysians?

May 22, 2014

Malaysia is in the top 10 least miserable countries in the world and how accurate is this study?

 

By Caitlyn Ng

If a study done by Economic Intelligence Unit is anything to go by; Malaysians are apparently not very miserable. But how is this study done? Arthur Okun, a distinguished American economist, ‘misery’, as it were, could actually be measured with direct links to inflation and unemployment. He developed the original misery index for the United States only, taking the sum of the inflation and unemployment rates to create it. This, he felt, could adequately tell us how miserable the people in a country were.

Fast forward to the late 2000s and you see Steve Hanke, a Johns Hopkins University economist, expand upon the original index in order to include other countries outside USA. For the updated version, he took the data for each country exclusively from the Economist Intelligence Unit and thus, it became the economic indicator which assumed that both a higher rate of unemployment and a worsening of inflation will create economic and social costs for any country.

Taking a look at the global index, it’s easy to see that for most people, their quality of life is important. Constituents prefer lower inflation rates, lower unemployment rates, lower lending rates, and higher GDP per capita. That sounds like a perfect country but in reality is near impossible to satisfy all qualities. Which is why on “The Best” list, you will still see the major contributing factors as to what makes the citizens a little upset (not as much misery as those on “The Worst” list of course!) along with the current rates.

Note: The misery index score is the sum of the unemployment rate, the lending rate, and the inflation rate (consumer prices; end-of-period) minus the percent change in real GDP per capita. Only countries where all four data series were available from the Economist Intelligence Unit were included in this index.

The most miserable countries

Ranking (The Worst)	Country	Misery Index	Major Contributing Factor	Current Figures
1	Venezuela	79.4	Consumer Prices	56. 2%
2	Iran	61.6	Consumer Prices	39.3%
3	Serbia	44.8	Unemployment	20.8%
4	Argentina	43.1	Consumer Prices	44.0%
5	Jamaica	42.3	Interest Rate	10.6%
6	Egypt	38.1	Unemployment	11.9%
7	Spain	37.6	Unemployment	25.2%
8	South Africa	37.4	Unemployment	25.0%
9	Brazil	37.3	Interest Rate	29.7%
10	Greece	36.4	Unemployment	24.2%

 
The least miserable countries

Ranking (The Best)	Country	Misery Index	Major Contributing Factor	Current Figures
1	Japan	5.41	Unemployment	3.6%
2	Taiwan	6.13	Unemployment	4.03%
3	Singapore	6.38	Interest Rate	3.2%
4	Republic of Korea	6.77	Interest Rate	4.4%
5	Thailand	6.83	Interest Rate	5.7%
6	Qatar	7.39	Interest Rate	0.9%
7	Malaysia	7.88	Interest Rate	4.0%
8	China	7.90	Real GDP Growth	7.8%
9	Panama	8.24	Interest Rate	2.2%
10	Norway	8.75	Unemployment	3.5%

So how accurate is this study?

How happy are you in Malaysia (since we’re in the top ten for happy)?

Caitlyn Ng is an Investigative Journalist of SaveMoney.my, an online consumer advice portal which aims to help Malaysians save money through smart (and most of the time painless) savings in their daily banking, technology, and lifestyle spending habits.