By Hollie Younger / Staff writer
Taiwan ranked as the world’s “least miserable economy” last year, claiming the top spot for a second consecutive year, according to Hanke’s Annual Misery Index by economic expert Steve Hanke, US business magazine Fortune reported.
Hanke is a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University.
The rankings are calculated using data including unemployment rates, inflation, bank lending rates and the annual percentage change in real GDP per capita, the report said.
Photo courtesy of the Taipei Geotechnical Engineering Office
This year’s ranking covered 178 countries, with Venezuela ranking as “most miserable,” with a misery index of 556.4916, namely due to inflation, the report said.
Venezuela was followed by Sudan, Turkey and Iran.
Taiwan took the top spot as “world’s happiest economy,” with a misery index of 2.1159, with low unemployment rates being the major contributing factor, it said.
In second place was Singapore, followed by Thailand and Ireland, with their successes attributed to low lending rates.
Taiwan’s real GDP growth per capita of 9.2 percent was the “special ingredient,” boosted by “insatiable global demand” for artificial intelligence hardware and semiconductors, the report said.