Colombia is the third most stressed-out country in the Americas and the most stressed-out in South America, according to a recent study.
According to the study by Bloomberg, Colombia is closely behind El Salvador and Guatemala in terms of stress.
The country’s high score in the stress-index is due to Colombia’s high rates in unemployment, homicide, and income inequality that were used to measure the stress of world citizens.
Colombia scored 10,3 % in unemployment rate, the second highest rate in Latin America. Every other country in the region had a significantly lower score, among them Venezuela with 7,8 %, Brazil 6 %, Peru 6,8 % and Argentina 7,1 %.
A second factor contributing to Colombia’s unfortunate ranking was the country’s yearly homicide rate. In Colombia 31.4 persons per 100,000 inhabitants were murdered last year. Although being significantly lower than El Salvador’s 69.2 or Venezuela’s 45.1, many countries in the region score lower. Bolivia scored 8.9, Brazil 21 and Argentina 3.4.
The study further revealed that Colombia is the second most unequal country in the world after South Africa. Although most Latin American countries recorded high inequality rates, Colombia “won” with its 58.5 GINI coefficient score. The GINI coefficient is used to measure inequality where 0 represents perfect equality and 100 represents perfect inequality.
Besides measuring unemployment, homicide and inequality, the study also measured the countries’ gross domestic product, corruption, air pollution and life expectancy.
All the seven measurements were equally weighted when the study scored the most stressed-out countries in the world.
According to the study Colombia is the 6th most stressed-out country worldwide. Scandinavian countries, with Norway at number one, top the list.